AUTHORS  AND   I 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

THE  ENCHANTED  STONE 
LIFE'S  LITTLE  THINGS 
LIFE'S  LESSER  MOODS 
ADVENTURES  AMONG  PICTURES 
DAYS  WITH  VELASQUEZ 
DAYS  IN  CORNWALL 
AUGUSTUS  SAINT  GAUDENS 
THE  EDUCATION  OF  AN  ARTIST 
THE  DIARY  OF  A  LOOKER-ON 
TURNER'S  GOLDEN  VISIONS 
REMBRANDT 

THE  POST  IMPRESSIONISTS 
BRABAZON:  His  Art  and  Life 
THE  CONSOLATIONS  OF  A  CRITIC 
THE  SOLDIER  BOY 
THE  INVISIBLE  GUIDE 
WHAT'S  FREEDOM? 
THINGS  SEEN  IN  AMERICA 
ART  AND  I 
ETC.,  ETC. 


AUTHORS   AND  I 


BY  C.   LEWIS  HIND 

AUTHOR  OP  "A*T  AND  I," 
"THE  POST  IMPRESSIONISTS," 
"AUGUSTUS  SAINT  GAUDENS,"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK    :   JOHN   LANE   COMPANY 
LONDON  :  JOHN  LANE,  THE  BODLEY  HEAD 

M,  MXXl 


COPYRIGHT,  igao, 
BY  JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 


Press  of 

J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 
New  York,  U.  S.  A. 


r\ 

m 


TO  THE  READER 

Why  this  book  was  written  will  be  found  at  the 
end.  The  authors  are  arranged  alphabetically.  So 
Henry  Adams  begins  and  William  Butler  Yeats 
completes  the  list.  Then  I  come  in. 

C.  L.  H. 


CONTENTS 

1.  Henry  Adams 

2.  Sherwood  Anderson 

3.  Gabriel e  LfAnnunsio 

4.  William  Waldorf  Astor 
-  5.  /.  M.  Barric 

6.  Max  Bccrbohm  39 

7.  Hilaire  Belloc  45 
a  Arnold  Bennett  50 
9.  G.  K.  Chesterton  56 

10.  Joseph  Conrad  61 

11.  Kenyon  Cox  65 

12.  Stephen  Crane  7° 

13.  William  Henry  Davies  75 

14.  Richard  Harding  Davis  So 

15.  /oJm  Drinkuvter  86 

16.  Lorrf  Dunsany  9* 

17.  7oA»  Galsworthy  95 

18.  Edmund  Gosse  99 

19.  Kenneth  Grahame  104 
ao.  T/ir  Grossmiths  108 

21.  Thomas  Hardy  114 

22.  Brr/  //or/^  "9 

23.  /o/in  Hoy  124 

24.  W.  E.  Hfnlty  130 

vii 


viii  Contents 

PAGE 

25.  "  O.  Henry  "  136 

26.  Maurice  Hewlett  142 

27.  /0/w  Oliver  Hobbes  147 

28.  TVi?  Ho  us  mans  152 

29.  William  Dean  Howells  157 

30.  Henry  James  K 

31.  Kudyard  Kipling 

32.  Andrew  Lang  171 

33.  William  }.  Locke  177 

34.  £.  F.  Lwra.?  182 

35.  Maurice  Maeterlinck  189 

36.  Edwin  Mark  ham  195 

37.  70/rn  Mascficld  201 

38.  George  Meredith  206 

39.  Leonard  Merrick  212 

40.  /4/iV*  Mcyncll  217 

41.  Stephen  Phillips  223 
.  George  Moore  229 

43.  /o/w  Morley  234 

44.  Walter  Pater  239 

45.  /I.  7\  Qiiiller-Couch  246 
.  Siegfried  Sassoon  252 

47.  George  Bernard  Shaw  256 

48.  /.  C.  SwaM  262 

49.  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  267 

50.  Francis  Thompson  273 

51.  Tolstoy  280 

52.  HwpA  Walpole  283 

53.  A/rr.  Humphry  Ward  289 

54.  William  Watson  294 
55-  //•  C.  H^/fc  300 


Contents  ix 

PAGE 

56.  Edith  Wharton  306 

57.  Walt  Whitman  3'2 
5a  W.  B.  Yeats  318 

59.  My  First  Book  3*5 

60.  My  Latest  Book:  This  One  & 


AUTHORS  AND   I 


AUTHORS  AND  I 


1.     HENRY  ADAMS 

D  I  ever  see  Henry  Adams?  We  may  have 
met,  for  he  was  a  cosmopolitan.  London, 
Paris,  Rome — and  Chartres  were  as  familiar  to  him 
as  Boston.  He  may  have  been  the  man  I  saw 
at  a  London  reception  in  intimate  talk  with  John 
Hay,  and  I  paused  to  watch  the  pair  because  here 
were  two  men  engrossed  in  that  rare  thing — real 
conversation. 

The  legend  of  Henry  Adams  has  long  been  familiar. 
At  Chartres  you  can  hardly  fail  to  strike  his  initiate 
trail ;  in  that  grove  at  Rock  Creek  Cemetery,  Wash 
ington,  where  the  Figure  by  Augustus  Saint  Gau- 
dens  sits  in  the  aura  of  a  silent  question  you  are 
in  the  presence  of  this  visionary  man,  for  it  was  he 
who  inspired  the  Figure.  Yes,  the  legend  of  Henry 
Adams  is  insistent,  but  the  man  eludes.  Those  who 
were  so  fortunate  as  to  be  able  to  borrow  a  copy  of 
the  privately  printed  (1904)  "Mont-Saint-Michel 
and  Chartres:  A  Study  of  Thirteenth  Century 
Unity"  realised  that  here  was  an  author  who 
counted,  an  unprofessional  writer,  a  questioner,  a 
scholar  with  humour  and  tang,  a  quintessential  Bos- 
13 


14  Authors  and  I 

tonian,  who  made  the  world  of  thought  his  city, 
and  who,  strange  to  say,  was  born  and  bred  in  the 
same  land  that  produced  Mr.  Woolworth  of  the  5 
and  10  cent  stores. 

In  1906  a  sequel  to  the  "Mont-Saint-Michel  and 
Chartres"  was  privately  printed  to  the  number  of 
100  copies  under  the  title,  "The  Education  of  Henry 
Adams:  A  Study  of  Twentieth  Century  Multi 
plicity."  In  1918  this  book  was  given  to  the  world 
under  the  title,  "The  Education  of  Henry  Adams: 
An  Autobiography." 

He  was  the  most  modest  of  men,  probably  the  most 
aggressively  modest  man  of  the  century.  His  modesty 
was  so  modest  that  it  blossomed  into  a  rare  flower 
of  vanity,  a  vanity  that  a  casuist  would  find  it 
extremely  difficult  to  diagnose  or  to  condemn.  Yet 
Henry  Adams  was  modest,  and  self-depreciatory  to  a 
degree  that  almost  amounts  to  genius.  What  then 
would  have  been  his  amazement  if  he  could  have 
known  that  in  1919  his  "Education,"  which  he 
never  even  regarded  as  a  finished  work,  was,  ex 
cluding  novels,  "a  best  seller."  It  appeared  in  every 
list  in  the  Books  in  Demand  at  Public  Libraries  and 
it  usually  came  first. 

Henry  Adams  a  popular  author!  What  a  chapter 
he  could  have  added  to  his  autobiography  on  this 
amazing  piece  of  news!  Yet  there  must  be  many 
people  who  have  begun  it  and  never  found  the 
end.  I  can  count  half  a  dozen  acquaintances  who 
have  failed  to  reach  the  last  chapter.  They  are  not 
readers ;  they  have  not  learnt  how  to  read.  He  who 
perseveres  and  peruses  the  last  three  chapters  must 


Henry  Adams  15 

at  once  read  them  again  and  again.  The  book  is 
supposed  to  be  a  record  of  failure.  But  what  is 
failure?  If  it  be  failure  to  leave  to  the  world  the 
Rock  Creek  Figure  and  this  "Education"  then  the 
meaning  of  the  word  failure  will  have  to  be  entirely 
changed. 

I  am  amazed  at  his  power  of  character  drawing,  not 
only  of  men  but  also  of  inanimate  things  (so  we  call 
them)  as  the  magnet,  the  compass,  the  dynamo,  and 
also  at  his  eloquent  analysis  of  the  convulsion  of 
310  when  the  Civitas  Dei  cut  itself  loose  from  the 
Civitas  Romae,  and  the  Cross  took  the  place  of  the 
legions." 

How  fresh  is  the  account,  how  un jaded,  of  his  first 
meeting  with  Swinburne. 

It  happened  in  the  year  1862.  Henry  Adams,  then 
private  secretary  to  his  father,  who  was  Ambassador 
to  Great  Britain,  was  invited  to  a  week-end  bachelor 
gathering  at  Fryston,  the  Yorkshire  place  of  Monck- 
ton  Milnes,  afterward  Lord  Houghton.  One  of  the 
guests  was  a  young  man,  "a  tropical  bird,  high- 
crested,  long-beaked,  quick  moving,  with  rapid  utter 
ance  and  screams  of  humour,  quite  unlike  any  Eng 
lish  lark  or  nightingale."  This  was  Algernon 
Charles  Swinburne.  In  the  course  of  the  evening 
Milnes  "thought  it  time  to  bring  Swinburne  out." 
And  out  he  came,  to  such  an  extent  that  he  held 
the  company  spellbound  till  far  into  the  night.  No 
one  in  my  experience,  says  Adams,  ever  approached 
the  rush  of  his  talk — his  incredible  memory,  his 
knowledge  of  literature,  classic,  mediaeval  and  mod 
ern;  "his  faculty  of  reciting  a  play  of  Sophocles 


1 6  Authors  and  I 

or  a  play  of  Shakespeare,  forward  or  backward  from 
end  to  beginning;  or  Dante,  or  Villon  or  Victor 
Hugo."  These  men  of  the  world  knew  not  what 
to  make  of  Swinburne's  rhetorical  recitation  of  his 
own  unpublished  ballads — "Faustine,"  "The  Ballad 
of  Burdens,"  which  he  declaimed  as  though  they 
were  books  of  the  "Iliad." 

Monckton  Milnes,  and  Sterling  of  Keir,  afterward 
Sir  William  Sterling-Maxwell,  who  was  one  of  the 
party,  regarded  Swinburne  as  a  prodigy  and 
descanted  on  the  wild  Walpurgisnight  of  his  talk. 
That  night  was  Swinburne's  dress  rehearsal,  a  fore 
taste  of  his  uncanny  power  of  intellectual  perform 
ance.  He  was  yet  to  prove  himself.  "Queen 
Mother  and  Rosamund"  had  been  published,  but 
"Poems  and  Ballads,"  which  made  him  famous,  was 
still  in  the  press. 

Years  and  years  later  when  the  poet  was  living  with 
Theodore  Watts-Dunton  at  The  Pines,  an  ugly 
suburban  villa  at  the  foot  of  Putney  Hill,  we  hero 
worshippers  would  linger  on  the  hill  to  watch  the 
fierce  little  poet  taking  his  fierce  morning  consti 
tutional  up  to  Wimbledon  Common.  An  invitation 
to  a  Saturday  evening  dinner  at  The  Pines  was  not 
difficult  to  obtain.  All  one  had  to  do  was  to  be 
properly  humble  and  appreciative  to  Theodore 
Watts-Dunton  at  one  of  the  important  private  views 
of  pictures  which  he  rarely  missed.  Did  Swinburne, 
I  wonder,  in  after  years  remember  the  shy  young 
American  private  secretary  that  wild  Walpurgis- 
night  at  Fryston  when  he  was  snubbed  by  the 
flaming  poet  for  admiring  Alfred  de  Musset?  An- 


Henry  Adams  17 

other  member  of  that  famous  party  was  Laurence 
Oliphant,  author  of  "Piccadilly,"  and  a  contributor 
"like  all  the  young  men  about  the  Foreign  Office" 
to  "The  Owl."  Here  is  Adams  on  Oliphant:  "He 
teemed  exceptionally  sane  and  peculiarly  suited  for 
country  houses,  where  every  man  would  enjoy  his 
company,  and  every  woman  would  adore  him." 
Later  in  life  Kipling  flashed  across  the  path  of 
Henry  Adams,  who  in  his  declining  years  was  still 
passionately  seeking  education  and  who  saw  no  hope 
of  ever  earning  a  living.  He  did  not  seem  to  realise 
that  he  was  earning  it  beautifully,  and  bountifully 
giving  away  to  posterity  all  he  earned.  Thanks 
to  the  mediation  of  Henry  James  he  met  the  author 
of  "Barrack  Room  Ballads"  on  a  voyage  to  America, 
and  Kipling  dashed  over  Henry  Adams  who  "the 
more  he  was  educated,  the  less  he  understood" — 
"his  exuberant  fountain  of  gaiety  and  wit — as 
though  playing  a  garden  hose  on  a  thirsty  and  faded 
begonia." 

Adams  saw  many  people:  he  saw  most  people  of 
importance:  he  saw  Abraham  Lincoln  "at  the  mel 
ancholy  function  called  an  Inaugural  Ball,  ...  a 
long,  awkward  figure;  a  plain,  ploughed  face;  a 
mind  absent  in  part,  and  in  part  evidently  worried 
by  white  kid  gloves." 

And  Adams  would  sit  in  the  grove  at  Rock  Creek 
and  listen  to  the  comments  of  the  visitors  upon 
Augustus  Saint  Gaudens'  Figure.  None  felt,  he 
ttys,  what  would  have  been  a  nursery-instinct  to  a 
Hindu  baby  or  a  Japanese  jinrickisha  runner.  He 
himself  supposed  its  meaning  to  be  the  one  common- 


1 8  Authors  and  I 

place  about  it— the  oldest  idea  known  to  human 
thought.  Yet  he  does  not  tell  us  what  the  meaning 
is.  So  the  world  will  continue  to  guess.  But  he 
does  say  that  the  interest  of  the  Figure  is  not  in  its 
meaning,  but  in  the  response  of  the  observer. 
If  the  American  Academy  of  Letters  crowned  a 
book  in  the  manner  of  the  French  Academy  the 
choice  would  surely  fall  upon  "The  Education  of 
Henry  Adams."  I  would  say  that  it  is  the  out 
standing  American  work  of  the  Twentieth  Century, 
the  swan  song  of  the  failure  of  culture  as  an  end, 
and  not  as  a  means.  It  is  the  most  egoistic  of 
books,  and  writing  it  in  the  third  person  does  not 
in  the  least  efface  the  ego  which  was  Adams'  aim. 
It  is  entirely  self-centred  and  intellectually  entirely 
delightful. 

Only  Bostonians  can  understand  Bostonians,  says 
Henry  Adams.  Well,  he  must  be  a  dull  foreigner 
who,  after  reading  this  rare  Autobiography,  fails 
to  understand  this  rare  Bostonian.  If  an  author, 
however  talented,  never  emerges  from  the  thought 
of  his  own  education,  he  is  quite  apt  to  find  the 
world  a  place  which  "sensitive  and  timid  natures 
regard  with  a  shudder." 

Henry  Adams  could  appreciate  exuberant  buoyan 
cies  like  the  young  Rudyard  Kipling,  but  after  the 
contact  he  would  at  once  glide  back  into  the  easy 
grooves  of  his  uneasy  shell. 


2.     SHERWOOD  ANDERSON 

IN  America  Walt  Whitman  in  verse  and  Wins- 
low  Homer  in  painting  stand  apart,  above, 
fixed — two  great  forces.  They  arc  racial;  they  are 
America.  The  New  England  school,  which  in 
cluded  and  includes  so  many  fine  writers,  carried 
on  and  carries  on,  with  variations,  the  English 
tradition. 

The  alphabetical  progression,  used  in  this  book, 
makes  Sherwood  Anderson  follow  Henry  Adams. 
That  is  curious  and  interesting.  These  two  rep 
resent  the  two  Americas — the  static  and  the  dynam 
ic,  the  past  and  the  future. 

The  twentieth  century  men,  chiefly  novelists  and 
poets,  who  have  surged  up  from  the  west  and  the 
middle  west,  are  akin  to  Walt  Whitman  and  Wins- 
low  Homer;  but  they  are  rougher,  more  amazed, 
more  confused  by  the  growth  and  spread  of  towns, 
and  the  boundless  activities  of  the  hustlers  and  the 
hustled.  They  are  entirely  racial,  bred  of  the  soil: 
their  themes  are  the  big  rough  men  who  are  doing 
big  rough  things  in  big  ways.  Their  material  is 
so  vast  and  complex  that  they  have  hardly  yet  had 
time  to  consider  the  niceness  of  style.  They  are 
hewers,  grabbers:  they  rarely  pick  and  choose:  they 
have  strength  but  little  daintiness  or  delicacy.  They 
are  what  they  should  be.  They  are  pioneers.  They 
19 


2O  Authors  and  I 

symbol  the  America  that  is  to  be.  Figures  like 
Anatole  France  and  Matthew  Arnold  belong  to 
another  century,  another  world. 
When  I  first  read  Sherwood  Anderson's  "Marching 
Men"  I  knew  at  once  that  he  is  a  man  to  watch. 
There  is  something  prophetical  in  his  vision  of  the 
brotherhood  and  solidarity  of  man  typified  by  the 
sound  of  feet,  marching  in  step,  rhythmically,  with 
a  purpose.  Again  and  again  in  recent  years  when 
organisations  have  loomed  up,  seemingly  resistless 
because  of  their  solidarity,  have  I  thought  of  his 
"Marching  Men"  and  McGregor,  the  forceful, 
illiterate  hero.  I  wish  that  Anderson  could  have 
kept  this  book  by  him  for  ten  years;  I  wish  that 
he  had  not  followed  the  advice  of  friends  and  cut 
down  the  latter  part  before  publication.  It  falls 
away  toward  the  end ;  his  grasp  of  the  subject,  so 
firm  at  the  beginning,  loosens.  But  it  is  a  remark 
able  study  of  a  personality  emerging  from  crude  con 
ditions  and  raw  men,  envisaging  how  to  herd  and 
lead,  and — well,  read  "Marching  Men." 
An  Englishman  could  not  have  written  "Windy 
McPherson's  Son,"  his  first  book.  It  is  pure  Amer 
ican,  middle-west  American,  this  story  of  a  news 
boy  who,  with  no  help  but  his  wits  and  grit,  be 
came  a  millionaire,  and  then  finds  that  he  is  a 
man  with  a  hunger  for  other  things.  Chicago, 
pushing  ahead,  Chicago  in  the  making,  splurges 
through  this  rough  but  reasoned  story,  this 
Odyssey  of  a  westerner  (so  different  from 
the  method  advocated  by  Dr.  Samuel  Smiles),  to 
be  followed  by  the  discovery  that  there  is  something 


Sherwood  Anderson  21 

better  beyond  the  horizon.  It  was  a  Chicago 
critic,  Floyd  Dell,  who  read  the  manuscript  and 
hailed  its  merits.  He  tried  to  find  a  publisher  for 
it  in  New  York,  failed,  sent  it  to  London,  where 
"Windy  McPherson's  Son"  was  promptly  accepted 
by  John  Lane.  He  cabled  to  his  firm  in  New  York 
to  sign  a  contract  with  Sherwood  Anderson  for 
three  books. 

The  second  was  "Marching  Men,"  the  third  was 
"Mid-American  Chants."  This  is  not  his  most 
popular  book — a  chant  has  small  chance  against  a 
tale — but  it  may  be  his  most  significant,  his  most 
self-expressive  book.  It  is  in  free  verse:  it  is  in  the 
Whitman  tradition:  it  could  not  be  in  anything  else; 
and  the  Foreword  explains  just  why  it  is  so.  Here 
is  an  extract: 

"I  do  not  believe  that  we  people  of  mid-western 
America,  immersed  as  we  are  in  affairs,  hurried  and 
harried  through  life  by  the  terrible  engine — indus 
trialism — have  come  to  the  time  of  song.  .  .  .  We 
do  not  sing,  but  mutter  in  the  darkness.  Our 
lips  are  cracked  with  dust  and  with  the  heat  of 
furnaces.  We  but  mutter  and  feel  our  way  toward 
the  promise  of  song.  ...  In  secret  a  million  men 
and  women  are  trying,  as  I  have  tried  here,  to 
express  the  hunger  within.  .  .  ." 
And  here  is  a  scrap  from  the  chant  called 

CHICAGO 

"I  am  a  child,  a  confused  child  in  a  confused  world. 
There  are  no  clothes  made  that  fit  me.  The  minds 
of  men  cannot  clothe  me.  Great  projects  arise 


22  Authors  and  I 

within  me.     I  have  a  brain  and  it  is  cunning  and 
shrewd. 

"I  am  a  little  thing,  a  tiny  little  thing  on  the  vast 
prairies.  I  know  nothing.  My  mouth  is  dirty.  I 
cannot  tell  what  I  want.  My  feet  are  sunk  in  the 
black,  swampy  land,  but  I  am  a  lover.  I  love  life. 
In  the  end  love  shall  save  me." 
His  fourth  book  was  "Winesburg,  Ohio,"  a  group 
of  tales  of  Ohio  small  town  life.  "The  Spoon 
River  Anthology,"  by  Edgar  Lee  Masters,  dealt 
with  the  past.  The  tales  in  "Winesburg"  deal 
with  the  present  and  the — future.  These  studies, 
direct,  uncompromising,  might  stand  for  any  small, 
growing  industrial  town  in  America.  They  are 
documents;  a  hundred  years  hence  they  will  have 
a  great  historical  value.  They  cry  out  against  con 
ditions:  they  seek  escape,  they  move. 
How  did  this  middle  westerner  come  to  writing? 
He  began  late;  he  wrote  as  a  relief,  an  escape  from 
conditions.  He  was  and  is  a  business  man  who 
writes  in  trains,  at  night-time,  anywhere,  any  time 
when  he  can  find  a  spare  hour.  Like  other  western 
boys  he  has  turned  his  hand  to  many  things  (see 
"Windy  MacPherson's  Son"),  but  his  chief  success 
is  in  the  advertising  world;  his  mind  bustles.  I 
am  told  that  the  "trade,"  when  you  ask  about  him, 
say:  "Sherwood  Anderson — oh,  yes,  he's  bright, 
humming  with  ideas — makes  stories  too." 
A  remote  ancestor  was  Major  Anderson  of  Fort 
Sumter:  a  nearer  ancestor  was  Governor  of  Ohio. 
Who  can  tell  how  the  arts  touched  this  family,  and 
with  such  dissimilarity?  Karl  Anderson,  the  artist, 


Sherwood  Anderson  23 

is  his  elder  brother.  Clyde,  Ohio,  is  their  home 
town.  A  third  brother,  Earl,  might  have  been  a 
painter  had  he  cared ;  he  is  now  in  the  United  States 
Navy. 

Sherwood  was  a  forceful,  pushful  boy,  "jobby  and 
swatty,"  turning  his  hand  to  anything,  making  a 
living  anyhow  from  selling  the  Cincinnati  Inquirer 
to  working  on  a  farm;  from  a  cold-storage  job  in 
Chicago  to  managing  a  baseball  team.  He  enlisted 
for  the  Spanish-American  War:  he  was  one  of  those 
who  policed  Cuba.  Then  he  went  to  Wittenberg 
College;  he  was  a  good  debater,  and  leader  of  the 
college — always,  you  see,  a  go-ahead  fellow;  soon 
he  drifted  into  advertising  and — writing.  At  this 
moment  he  is  in  Alabama  finishing  a  novel. 
I  saw  him  last  in  his  brother's  studio.  The  talk 
about  art  and  life  was  fierce.  Sherwood  was  restless 
because  he  wanted  to  read  us  a  short  story  he  had 
just  finished.  At  a  late  hour  we  succumbed.  It 
was  a  fine  story  and  he  read  it  wonderfully,  ham 
mering  the  points  at  us,  standing.  I  reflected  that 
the  authors  I  know  in  Hampstead,  Middlesex,  never 
read  their  stories  aloud.  They  endeavour  to  convey 
the  idea  (this  is  camouflage)  that  their  stories  are 
not  worth  reading  and  hardly  worth  writing.  That 
is  the  way  of  authors  in  Hampstead,  Middlesex.  In 
Winesburg,  Ohio,  authors  are  different. 


3.     GABRIELE  D'ANNUNZIO 

SOON  after  the  beginning  of  the  present  century 
I  happened  to  be  in  Italy.  Arriving  at  Venice 
I  instructed  a  gondolier  to  convey  me  to  the  Hotel 
Danieli,  which,  as  everybody  knows,  has  an  Anglo- 
Saxon  savour.  I  was  tired  of  macaroni  and  Italian 
newspapers:  my  system  called  for  a  chop  and  the 
Times. 

I  chose  a  secluded  seat  in  the  dining-room  and  was 
waiting  patiently  for  my  chop  a  la  Edward  VII 
when  a  party  of  Italians  noisily  entered  and  seated 
themselves  at  an  adjoining  table.  They  were  talking 
all  at  once,  and  wildly,  as  they  approached ;  and 
they  continued  to  talk  all  at  once,  and  wildly,  as 
they  tucked  their  napkins  into  the  space  between  the 
neck  and  the  collar ;  they  talked  on  without  cessation. 
Realising  that  my  fancy  for  an  evening  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  savour  would  not  be  gratified,  I  amused  my 
self  by  awaiting  an  answer  to  the  sporting  question 

-"How  long  can  they  keep  it  up?" 
I  am  not  so  foolish  as  to  approve  or  disapprove  of 
Anglo-Saxon  taciturnity,  or  to  approve  or  disapprove 
of  Italian  vivacity.  Each  is  indigenous,  racial.  But 
listening  (I  could  not  help  overhearing;  as  one 
cannot  avoid,  on  an  August  night,  overhearing  the 
crickets)  to  those  voluble  Italians  I  felt  how  much 
more  intense  a  social  pleasure  the  Latin  derives  from 
24 


Gabriele  D'Annunzio  25 

life  than  the  Anglo-Saxon.  They  talked  as  if  talk 
ing  mattered ;  they  scattered  ideas,  they  flashed  com 
ments,  they  behaved  to  each  other  as  if  each  had 
something  to  contribute  to  art  and  life.  Soon  they 
were  talking  about  the  flowers  that  decorated  their 
table.  My  meagre  knowledge  of  Italian  told  me 
that,  even  if  they  had  not  handled  the  blossoms 
and  expatiated  upon  their  beauty.  One  of  the  party, 
dropping  into  English,  spoke  of  "savage  flowers." 
Not  until  the  next  morning  did  I  realise  that  he 
meant  wild  flowers.  Soon  the  conversation  turned 
to  poetry,  and  I  caught  the  names  Tasso  and 
Carducci.  When  they  spoke  of  Carducci  all  turned 
to  a  slight,  short,  animated  bald-headed  man  who 
sat  at  the  head  of  the  table.  Throughout  the 
evening  they  had  paid  him  especial  deference,  but 
with  the  name  of  Carducci  he  seemed  suddenly  to 
assume  the  role  of  a  king,  and  he  talked,  oh,  how 
he  talked!  I  have  never  heard  anything  like  it. 
I  should  not  have  thought  that  the  human  mentality 
could  fashion  thoughts  so  quickly,  or  that  human 
lips  could  utter  them  so  rapidly.  It  was  wonderful, 
and  it  was  like  music — such  cadences,  such  spasms 
of  prose  melody.  The  soup  passed,  the  fish  came, 
and  still  he  talked.  Once  I  thought  that  no  utter 
ance  was  so  musically  rapid  as  Sarah  Bcrnhardt's. 
But  he  beat  her.  I  forgot  my  chop,  I  forgot  my 
Times,  I  beckoned  the  waiter,  one  of  those  polyglot 
people  who  speak  no  language,  but  something  of 
every  tongue. 

"Who   is   he?"    I    whispered.     "Do   you    know?" 
The  waiter  looked  at  me  curiously,  patronisingly — 


26  Authors  and  I 

as  the  Irish  policeman  looked  when  I  asked  him 
which  was  Boston  Common  and  answered,  "He 
with  the  bald  head  and  the  (his  fingers  pantomimed 
the  upword  turn  of  fierce  moustachios) — he?  That 
is  d'Annunzio — the  great  Gabriele  d'Annunzio." 
Many  years  have  passed  since  then,  and  during  the 
period  I  have  acquainted  myself,  indifferently  well, 
with  the  novels,  plays  and  poems  of  Gabriele 
d'Annunzio.  Frankly,  if  I  had  consulted  my  own 
choice,  I  do  not  suppose  that  I  should  ever  have 
opened  a  book  by  him.  Amorists  do  not  interest 
me,  and  although  I  fully  admit  the  literary  skill  and 
subtlety  of  "II  Trionfo  del  Morte,"  of  "Le  Vergini 
delle  Rocce,"  of  "II  Piacere,"  which  have  all  been 
translated  into  English,  they  do  not  please  me; 
worse,  they  are  unpleasant.  To  me  they  narrowed 
life,  they  exaggerated  bits  and  left  whole  tracts 
much  more  interesting,  untouched,  unexplored.  It 
was  like  being  confined  in  a  small,  overheated  room 
heavy  with  perfume.  I  remembered,  when  I  re 
turned  "II  Trionfo  del  Morte"  to  the  library,  a 
copy  of  "Tom  Jones"  happened  to  be  lying  on  the 
table.  I  turned  the  pages,  inhaled  drafts  of  whole 
some  air  and  swept  out  into  tracts  of  broad  human 
ity.  I  took  the  book  to  a  chair,  and  at  the  end  of 
an  hour  d'Annunzio,  in  spite  of  his  amazing  gifts 
of  analysis  and  his  power  of  word  painting,  was 
forgotten. 

To  follow  a  course  of  d'Annunzio  with  a  course  of 
George  Eliot  is  to  understand  the  difference  between 
the  Latin  and  the  Anglo-Saxon.  I  am  not  proud, 


Gabriel c  D'Annunzio  27 

I  hope  that  I  do  not  consider  myself  better  than 
anybody  else,  but,  nevertheless — 

I  thank  the  goodness  and  the  grace 
That  on  my  birth  has  smiled 
And  made  me  in  this  troubled  place 
An  Anglo-Saxon  child. 

Why,  then,  the  reader  may  ask,  trouble  about 
d'Annunzio — why  not  spend  your  leisure  time  with 
George  Eliot,  Mrs.  Humphrey  Ward,  and  Kate 
Douglas  Wiggin?  The  answer  is  that  the  true 
Bookman  is  international.  He  must  know  some 
thing  about  letters  everywhere,  and  it  would  be 
mere  stupidity  to  ignore  one  whose  reputation  as 
an  artist  is  as  great  as  his  notoriety  as  a  man.  Of 
him  a  countrywoman  has  said:  "For  thirty  years 
Europe  has  been  aghast  at  d'Annunzio's  escapades, 
which  have  served  to  make  him  the  arch-type  of  the 
decadent  superman  of  the  1890's."  This  may  have 
served  as  a  description  of  him  before  the  war,  but 
his  daring  and  heroism  as  an  airman  revealed  a  new 
side  in  d'Annunzio.  He,  a  man  past  middle  age, 
rose  to  be  one  of  the  first  airmen  of  the  day,  and, 
as  if  that  were  not  enough,  he  astounded,  and 
secretly,  against  their  judgment,  ingratiated  the 
world  with  the  wild  adventure  of — Fiume. 
When  that  folly  was  at  its  height  I  picked  from  a 
friend's  shelves  his  "La  Figlia  di  Jorio,"  a  pastoral 
thirteenth  century  tragedy  which  was  issued  in  Eng 
lish  in  1907,  thinking  that  I  would  make  one  more 
brave  attempt  to  be  captured  by  Gabriele  d'Annun 
zio.  No.  I  went  labouriously  through  it.  I 


28  Authors  and  I 

yawned.  And  having  finished  it  I  turned  for  relief 
and  reward  to  a  re-reading  of  John  Drinkwater's 
"Abraham  Lincoln." 

Next  day  a  piece  of  good  fortune  befell  me.  I  met 
an  Italian-American,  now  an  American  citizen,  who 
has  been  living  in  the  United  States  for  twenty 
years.  I  unburdened  myself  to  him  about  Gabriele 
d'Annunzio;  I  explained  to  him  how  the  pastoral 
tragedy  "La  Figlia  de  Jorio"  had  wearied  me.  He 
smiled,  he  brushed  away  my  anxieties.  "It's  a  sheer 
waste  of  time,"  he  said,  "to  read  d'Annunzio  in  Eng 
lish.  His  plots  are  nothing,  his  characterisations  are 
on  one  string  only.  It  is  for  his  language  we  read 
him,  his  magical  Italian,  his  cunning  use  of  words, 
his  mastery  of  rhythm,  his  gift  of  resuscitating  old 
forms  of  verse  and  inventing  new  ones.  Why  in 
Tuoco'  it  is  calculated  that  he  has  added  a  thousand 
words  to  the  current  Italian  vocabulary.  I  read 
him  with  delight,  as  you  read  Swinburne,  for  the 
sound,  not  for  the  sense.  He  ought  never  to  have 
been  translated.  You  can't  translate  d'Annunzio. 
It's  absurd.  Apart  altogether  from  his  work  as  poet, 
playwright  and  novelist,  there  is  the  man  himself. 
You  can't  place  him;  you  can't  describe  him.  He 
seems  to  be  compounded  of  flame,  of  fire  that 
nothing  can  quench.  Why  was  the  Italian  Govern 
ment  lenient  with  him  about  the  Fiume  escapade? 
Because  everybody  in  Italy  knows  how  much  the 
country  owes  to  him.  His  fiery  speeches,  rhetoric 
you  would  call  them,  brought  Italy  into  the  war;  his 
'Laudi,'  songs  in  praise  of  Italy,  roused  his  country 
men  to  fervour;  and  what  episode  of  the  war  was 


Gabriele  D* Annunzio  29 

more  magnificent  than  his  flight  to  Vienna?  He  was 
the  leader  of  the  escadrille;  he  hovered  over  the 
city;  he  swooped  low  and  dropped  his  leaflets.  He 
had  written  them  himself  in  his  impassioned  prose. 
The  leaflets  said:  'We  might  have  dropped  bombs; 
we  drop  messages  of  warning,  we  airmen,  we  poets.' 
Oh,  yes,  I  know  all  about  him,  his  wildness,  his  way 
wardness,  his  wil fulness,  but  he  is  a  great  poet  and 
a  great  man.  Blame  him  as  you  wish,  like  or  dislike 
him,  but  for  pity's  sake  don't  read  him  in  English. 
And  if  ever  you  have  the  chance — just  hear  him 
talk." 

Thinking  it  all  over,  I  was  fortunate  in  dropping 
in  to  dinner  at  the  Hotel  Danieli,  Venice,  one  night 
at  the  beginning  of  the  present  century.  In  future, 
when  anybody  says  to  me — "Have  you  read  Gabriele 
d'Annunzio's  latest?"  I  shall  reply — "No,  but  I 
have  heard  him  talk." 


4.    WILLIAM  WALDORF  ASTOR 

IN  July,  1919,  American  newspapers  proclaimed 
the  following  in  bold  headlines — "Viscount 
Astor  Goes  into  Seclusion.  Former  American  in 
Mystery  House  at  Brighton,  England,  Bars  All 
Callers."  Then  followed  the  article,  "a  good 
story,"  clever  journalism,  inaccurately  accurate,  and 
all  that. 

This  fal-lal  of  news,  flashed  by  cable,  omnivorously 
read,  merely  meant  that  an  elderly  gentleman,  bored 
by  society,  as  are  most  of  us,  had  taken  a  house  at 
Brighton,  one  of  the  healthiest  places  in  England, 
and  was  there  engaged  in — cultivating  his  garden. 
That  venerable  phrase  meant,  in  this  case,  pursuing 
literature.  Others  have  done  this  without  troubling 
the  cable,  or  making  any  particular  stir  in  the 
world;  but  William  Waldorf  Astor,  a  British  peer, 
with  the  pleasant  title  of  Viscount  Astor  of  Hever 
Castle,  had  the  misfortune  to  be  one  of  the  richest 
men  in  the  world;  so  his  harmless  occupation  of 
cultivating  literature,  with  the  ordinary  safeguards, 
encouraged  some  lively  journalist  to  flash  the  words 
"Mystery  House"  across  the  Atlantic.  Also  to  in 
form  Americans  (it  was  naughty  of  William  Wal 
dorf  to  become  a  British  citizen)  that  a  formidable 
person,  something  between  a  gamekeeper  and  a 
family  retainer,  "parades  before  the  'Mystery 
30 


William  Waldorf  Astor  31 

House/  to  warn  off  callers."  Surely,  reader,  that 
is  what  you  and  I  would  do  if  we  could  afford  it. 
Boat  owners  at  Coney  Island  and  Yarmouth  Sands 
also  warn  off  callers  but  they  can  afford  to  issue 
their  warning  cheaply:  they  merely  write  on  the 
inside  of  their  boats  when  drawn  up  for  hire — "Keep 
out !  This  means  you !" 

Viscount  Astor  of  Hever  was  not  gregarious.  Few 
millionaires  are.  His  public  appearances  were  few 
after  he  became  a  British  subject,  and  of  the  crowds 
who  frequent  the  sea  front  at  Brighton  or  the  few 
who  visit  the  purlieus  of  the  Tudor  village  that  he 
aimed  to  create  around  Hever  Castle,  probably  not 
5  per  cent  knew  that  the  tall  Solitary,  engrossed  in 
reflections,  indifferent  to  passers-by,  very  lonely,  was 
Lord  Astor.  And  perhaps  not  1  per  cent  knew  that 
he  was  a  man  of  letters — or  would  have  been  if  he 
could. 

Writing  was  always  his  hobby,  and  the  hobby  of 
a  millionaire  is  a  serious  matter.  When  I,  in  an 
editorial  capacity,  knew  him,  now  some  years  syne, 
I  was  aware  that  he  always  had  some  literary  work 
on  hand,  usually  stories,  long  and  short.  The  life  of 
today  presumably  did  not  interest  him:  in  each  of 
his  literary  efforts  his  mind  rolled  back  a  few  hun 
dred  or  a  few  thousand  years,  and  he  produced 
literature  garbed  in  what  was  known  in  the  nineties 
as  Wardour  Street  English.  Lest  his  fellow  mil 
lionaires  may  think  I  am  romancing,  I  beg  to  cull 
from  "Who's  Who"  a  list  of  William  Waldorf's 
literary  productions:  "Valentino,  a  Story  of 
Rome";  "Sorza,  a  Historical  Romance  of  the  Six- 


32  Authors  and  I 

teenth  Century  in  Italy";  "Pharaoh's  Daughter,  and 
Other  Stories." 

Parts  of  the  longer  books  I  have  read  and  some  of 
the  shorter  stories,  and  I  frankly  admit  that  they 
did  not  carry  me  off  my  feet;  but  neither  do  the 
romances  of  William  Morris.  Lord  Astor  had  not 
the  antient  knack  of  Maurice  Hewlett,  who  defi 
antly  refuses  to  allow  us  to  be  bored  by  the  past. 
But  Mr.  Hewlett  can  also  write  vividly  of  the 
present.  That,  I  imagine,  was  impossible  to  Lord 
Astor.  His  heart  was  in  a  leisurely  world  of  long 
ago:  his  heart  was  in  the  Hever  Castle  recreated 
to  look  as  it  looked  in  Tudor  times. 
Yet  it  was  ordained  that  this  medievalist  who  left 
America  to  be  quiet  (so  they  say)  should  have  been 
the  cause  of  one  of  the  most  revolutionary  and 
exciting  affairs  in  London  journalism. 
The  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  still  running,  has  a  long, 
honourable  and  versatile  career.  It  has  been  in 
many  a  skirmish,  many  a  fight.  In  1893  a  bomb 
fell.  The  bomb  was  in  the  shape  of  a  letter  from 
the  proprietor  announcing  that  he  had  sold  the 
Gazette  and  the  Budget.  The  name  of  the  buyer 
was  not  disclosed.  For  months  he  was  the  journal 
istic  dark  horse  of  the  day;  but  it  was  whispered 
that  he  had  unlimited  wealth,  that  he  was  de 
termined  to  make  the  Gazette  and  the  Budget  the 
most  wonderful  daily  and  weekly  of  the  period, 
and  that  he  was  going  to  add  to  them  a  monthly — 
the  Pall  Mall  Magazine. 

Mystery    enwrapped    the   enrolment   of    the   staff. 
They  were  engaged  by  a  handsome  lawyer  and  a 


William  Waldorf  Astor  33 

handsomer  financier;  they  were  handsomely  paid 
and  told  not  to  talk;  but  the  principals  were  bid 
den  to  Carlton  House  Terrace,  where  a  sedate 
butler  conducted  them  into  the  presence  of  Henry 
Cockayne  Cust,  Member  of  Parliament,  with  a 
dashing  maiden  speech  to  his  credit,  heir  to  the 
Earldom  of  Brownlow,  and  one  of  the  most  tal 
ented  and  charming  young  men  of  the  day.  He 
announced  himself  as  the  new  editor  of  the  Pall 
Mall  Gazette,  and  he  asked  me  if  I  would  be  editor 
of  the  Pall  Mall  Budget;  he  spoke  of  wonderful 
new  offices,  amazing  new  printing  machines,  a  pro 
gram  to  beat  the  band,  and  he  let  out  that  the  dark 
horse  was  the  Hon.  William  Waldorf  Astor  of 
America. 

Those  were  days.  Money  was  no  object.  The 
editors  of  the  three  publications  could  spend  what 
they  liked.  They  did.  They  reveled  in  the  novelty 
of  seeking  the  best  and  buying  it.  And  periodically 
each  of  the  editors  paid  a  ceremonious  visit  to  the 
proprietor.  The  invitation  was  issued  by  Mr. 
Astor's  confidential  solicitor,  the  day  and  hour 
named,  and  punctually  the  editor  presented  himself 
at  the  palatial  and  beautiful  offices  of  the  Astor 
estate,  which  had  been  erected  upon  the  Thames 
Embankment,  the  choicest  site,  adjoining  the 
Temple.  With  due  ceremony,  handed  on  from 
grave  factotum  to  grave  factotum,  the  editor  was 
conducted  into  tRe  Presence,  to  be  commended  or 
chided,  and  to  receive  instructions.  One  of  the 
editors  (I  was  he),  alarmed  at  the  gigantic  nature 
of  a  journalistic  scheme  propounded  by  the  proprie- 


34  Authors  and  I 

tor,  blurted  out:  "But  that  will  cost  a  vast  deal 
of  money,  sir."  There  was  a  pause;  then  I  was 
vouchsafed  this  answer,  quite  friendly,  but  scornful 
and  final:  "Pray,  sir,  who  pays  the  bill?" 
The  publications  had  a  brilliant  life  of  a  few  years. 
Today  only  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  remains,  and  it 
now  belongs  to  another.  If  Lord  Astor's  books  did 
not  have  the  circulation  of  Nat  Gould's,  at  least 
he  had  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  he  played 
a  hand,  dour,  domineering,  and  unprecedented,  in 
the  journalism  of  the  nineties. 
Many  books  have  since  been  published  that  had 
their  origin  in  the  Gazette,  the  Budget,  and  the 
Magazine — Stevenson,  Kipling,  Wells — and  last 
year,  so  long  after,  there  was  issued  from  the  press 
another — "Occasional  Poems  by  Henry  Cust,  edi 
tion  of  450  copies." 

I  think  he  was  the  first  editor  to  publish  a  poem 
daily  in  his  newspaper,  and  certainly  he  was  the 
first  editor,  and  perhaps  the  last,  to  show  his  readers 
that  an  editor's  poems  can  be  better  than  the  others. 
They  were  unsigned.  But  we  knew  who  wrote 
them — Harry  Cust,  editor  and  poet !  Viva  adhuc  et 
desiderio  pulcriora — Living  still  and  more  beautiful 
because  of  our  longing. 


5.    J.  M.  BARRIE 

HE  gives  his  address  as  Kirriemuir,  Scotland, 
and  his  club  as  the  Athenaeum.  That  is  like 
him~to  say  that  he  lives  in  the  wee  Scots  village 
where  he  was  born,  which  he  has  made  famous;  and 
to  link  with  Kirriemuir  membership  of  the  most 
exclusive  club  in  London.  Everybody,  of  course, 
knows  that  he  lives  in  the  Adelphi  Terrace  over 
looking  the  Thames,  and  that  his  real  club  is  the 
nursery  of  any  house. 

I  saw  him  first  many  years  ago  when  he  took  the 
call,  with  his  collaborator  Marriot  Watson,  at  the 
end  of  the  performance  of  "Richard  Savage,"  his 
solitary  failure,  and  I  believe  the  only  time  that  he 
has  bowed  acknowledgments  before  the  curtain.     It 
was  not  a  good  play — there  was  little  of  the  real 
Barrie  in  it,  and  little  of  the  real  Marriot  Watson. 
I  have  forgotten  all  about  "Richard  Savage,"  but 
I  remember  the  authors  distinctly.     Marriot  Wat 
son  is  an  Australian,  tall  and  burly,  with  a  fuzzy- 
wuzzy  shock  of  hair,  who  looks  as  if  he  could,  like 
Milo  the  Cretonian,  slay  an  ox  with  his  fist  and  eat 
it  at  one  meal:  Barrie  is  a  little  man,  shy-looking 
and  dark,  with  black  hair,  a  dome-like  forehead, 
pale  as  ivory,  and  eyes  that  look  as  if  they  always 
want  to  escape  from  what  he  is  doing.     He  reached 
to  Marriot  Watson's  shoulder:  they  held  hands  and 
35 


3 6  Authors  and  I 

tried  to  bow:  they  looked  miserable;  then  the  cur 
tain  mercifully  released  them. 
Barrie  as  a  man  is  elusive.  You  hardly  know  when 
he  is  in  a  room:  you  always  knew  when  Richard 
Harding  Davis  was  in  a  room.  Once  I  met  Barrie 
at  a  tea  party.  That  amused  me  because  he  is  not 
usually  amenable  to  parlour  festivities.  For  a  short 
time  he  crept  about  the  purlieus  of  the  company; 
soon  he  seated  himself  on  a  stool  behind  the  door 
waiting  till  somebody  should  open  it;  then  he  slipped 
out. 

He  probably  enjoyed  the  affair  because  he  has  his 
own  Lob-like  thoughts.  He  is  very  observant,  and 
examines  himself  as  minutely  and  whimsically  as  he 
examines  other  people.  Have  you  heard  the  story 
of  the  great  literary  dinner  in  London  with  Barrie 
in  the  chair,  and  the  article  upon  it  in  the  National 
Observer  which  chaffed  Barrie  as  chairman,  and 
made  him  look  rather  silly.  The  readers  of  the 
National  Observer  resented  this  descent  to  person 
alities,  and  protested  that  the  article  chaffing  Barrie 
as  chairman  was  in  bad  taste,  and  beneath  the  dig 
nity  of  the  National  Observer.  The  editor  received 
so  many  angry  letters  that  he  was  obliged  to  publish 
a  note  saying  that  the  article  was  written  by  Barrie 
himself. 

He  is  like  his  own  Lob  in  "Dear  Brutus";  he  loves 
to  spring  surprises  on  rather  a  dense  world.  He  is 
the  child — a  silent,  inward-laughing,  restless  child, 
learning  his  lessons  in  his  own  way — who  will  never 
grow  up.  There  is  nothing  of  Darwin  or  Spencer 
in  him,  nothing  of  Matthew  Arnold  or  Dean  Inge. 


/.  M.  Bar rie  37 

The  pathos  and  humour  of  actual  life  suffice  for 
him.  His  war  contributions  are  things  like  "The 
Old  Lady  Shows  Her  Medals,"  so  touching  and  so 
moving;  his  sociological  contributions  are  things  like 
"The  Admirable  Crichton,"  which  had  such  a 
searching  moral  because  it  was  founded  upon,  not 
theories  or  books,  but  human  nature. 
I  do  not  think  that  he  has  changed  at  all  in  the 
passage  of  years.  Those  early  articles  in  the  St. 
James'  Gazette  had  all  the  Barrie  pathos,  fancy, 
and  freakish  humour.  They  were  a  clear  stream  of 
tender  fancy  running  amid  the  muddy  wordiness  of 
journalism.  Many  of  them  were  about — nothing. 
But  it  is  his  way  to  take  a  subject  that  no  other 
author  would  consider  worth  troubling  about,  and 
make  it  memorable.  What  author  would  find  him 
self  able  to  write  about  his  mother  in  the  way  that 
Barrie  treated  the  little  Scots  lady  in  "Margaret 
Ogilvy"?  And  who  else  would  have  had  confidence 
to  write  an  important  play  on  the  subject  of  "Little 
Mary"? 

The  career  of  J.  M.  Barrie  shows  how  useless 
schools  of  journalism  or  literature  are  to  produce 
the  real  writing  man  or  woman.  What  were  Bar- 
ric's  assets?  An  intense  love  for  home,  for  the 
Scots  folk  with  whom  he  grew  up;  for  children; 
the  power  to  express  himself  in  straightforward, 
supple  English — and,  above  all  else,  humour;  some 
thing  of  Puck,  something  of  Ariel,  something  of 
Charles  Lamb  and  Tom  Hood,  mixed  with  Celtic 
wistfulness  and  wonder.  Add  to  that  sympathy,  the 
observation  of  a  cat  watching  a  bird,  with  the  power 


38  Authors  and  I 

to  use  everything  he  sees  and  feels  as  material  for 
his  craft,  with  not  the  slightest  wish  to  be  Guy  de 
Maupassant  or  anybody  else,  and  we  begin  to  under 
stand  why  the  poor  Scots  boy  has  become  Sir  James 
Matthew  Barrie,  1st  Bt.  cr.  1913.  I  wager  that 
all  this  is  nothing  to  him.  In  his  heart  he  is  still 
Jamie  of  Kirriemuir,  N.  B.,  always  making  mental 
notes,  hurrying  over  high  tea  (scones  and  jam)  so 
that  he  may  dip  his  pen  in  a  penny  ink  bottle,  and 
chuckle  over  the  writing  of  an  Auld  Licht  Idyll, 
and,  mind  you,  being  a  Scot,  always  with  his  eye 
on  the  goal. 

Were  he  proud-minded,  little  Barrie  might  well 
succumb  and  feel  proud,  for  a  great  fellow  Scot, 
Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  expressed  himself  about 
the  author  of  "A  Window  in  Thrums"  in  a  way 
which— here  it  is.  In  a  letter  to  J.  M.  Barrie  from 
Vailima,  dated  December,  1892,  R.  L.  S.  says: 
"I  am  a  capable  artist;  but  it  begins  to  look  to  me 
as  if  you  were  a  man  of  genius.  Take  care  of 
yourself  for  my  sake." 
It  takes  a  big  man  to  praise  bigly. 


6.     MAX  BEERBOHM 

WHEN  I  turn  to  Max  Beerbohm's  name  in 
"Who's  Who,"  and  read  the  brief,  bald 
biography,  I  feel  "at  home,"  and  also  "not  at  home." 
I  am  at  home  when  I  read  that  he  was  educated  at 
Charterhouse  and  Oxford:  that  in  the  nineties, 
when  he  was  in  the  twenties,  he  issued  "The  Works 
of  Max  Beerbohm"  (this  was  humour)  ;  a  year  or 
so  afterward  "More"  (this  also  was  humour),  and 
a  little  later  "Yet  Again"  (additional  humor). 
This  serious  fun  was  like  Max,  the  Max  we  know, 
the  aloof,  silent  Max,  who  was  always  in  the  social 
world  and  yet  not  of  it;  who  never  grinned  through 
a  horse  collar,  he  couldn't,  he  wouldn't  if  he  could ; 
who  smiled  wearily  at  his  own  fun;  who  took  in 
credible  pains  to  be  the  most  gentlemanly  and  the 
most  elusive  of  humourists,  descending  from 
Charles  Lamb  and  Thackeray;  and  he  might  almost 
call  Andrew  Lang  uncle.  He  is  our  aristocrat  of 
humour:  he  is  the  author  of  "The  Happy  Hypo 
crite"  (oh,  the  delight  with  which  I  read  it!),  of 
"The  Christmas  Garland,"  and  of  "Zuleika  Dob- 
son." 

Will  he  be  angry  if  I,  who  am  his  devoted  admirer, 
who  peruse  him  with  consistent  pleasure;  will  he 
cavil  if  I  say  that  "Zuleika  Dobson"  docs  not 
intrigue  me?  He  himself  knows  better  than  anyone 
39 


4O  Authors  and  I 

else  that,  with  the  best  intentions,  one  cannot  ask 
a  ladybird  to  become  a  bumblebee. 
But  I  have  not  yet  explained  why,  in  reading  Max 
Beerbohm's  brief,  bald  biography,  I  find  myself  in 
parts  of  it  "not  at  home."  These  are  the  passages: 
" — m.  1910  Florence  Kahn,  of  Memphis,  Tennes 
see.  Address,  Villino  Chiaro,  Rapallo,  Italy." 
There  is  nothing  wrong  in  this.  I  myself  married 
a  southerner,  and  I  have  lived  for  a  time  in  Italy. 
But  I  do  not  feel  at  home  with  him  when  I 
visualise  him  rusticating  in  the  vineyards  of  Rapallo 
and  perhaps  exchanging  military  witticisms  with 
Capt.  Gabriele  d'Annunzio.  For  he  was  and  is  a 
London  dandy  of  the  choicest  kind ;  the  gentle  emi 
nence  of  St.  James's  Street,  as  Lord  Beaconsfield 
called  it,  not  entrancing  Rapallo  is  his  walk  in  life; 
he,  above  all  others,  understands  the  nice  conduct 
of  a  clouded  cane,  the  right  shape  and  tilt  of  a 
silk  hat,  and  the  proper  point  where  a  frock  coat 
(now  unmodish)  should  artfully  bulge  in  the  bosom. 
It  was  he,  too,  who  some  years  ago  tried  to  make 
man  ashamed  of  his  sombre,  faultless  evening  garb. 
What  was  the  method,  Beau  Max?  Really,  I  have 
forgotten.  Was  the  exquisite  coat  purple  or  dark 
chocolate?  The  knee  breeches  I  know  were  black, 
and  I  fancy  there  was  a  shimmer  of  moonlight  in  the 
hue  of  the  silk  stockings.  Whatever  it  was,  be  sure 
there  was  nothing  vulgar  about  the  dress,  for  our 
author  has  the  quietest  of  tastes  in  raiment  as  in 
writing.  Only  a  very  fastidious  mind  could  wear 
a  smile  so  bored  yet  so  observant,  a  shoe  so  dainty, 
a  buttonhole  so  chaste. 


Max  Beerbohm  41 

And  yet  all  these  things  were,  and  arc,  really 
nothing  to  him — ephemera — amused  attempts  to 
decorate  a  rather  drab  and  dull  world.  In  reality, 
our  friend,  the  last  of  the  dandies,  for  now  nobody 
outside  these  United  States  has  any  money  left  for 
clothes,  is  a  very  serious  and  hardworking  artist. 
Have  I  not  seen  him  in  the  act  of  composing  one  of 
those  dramatic  articles  for  the  Sun  Jay  Review,  so 
wise,  so  witty,  that  we  were  obliged  to  put  down  our 
six-pences  for  this  weekly  journal  written  by  crusted 
Tories  for  crusted  Tories,  so  long  as  he  was  on 
the  staff.  He  would  write,  through  spacious  morn 
ings,  on  cream  laid  paper,  in  large  important  callig 
raphy — and  the  erasures?  Ah,  the  erasures!  They 
were  blacked  out  with  an  artistic  blackness  that  a 
war-time  censor  might  have  envied.  And  why? 
Because  the  artistic  heart  of  Max  would  not  allow 
even  the  printer  or  the  printer's  reader  to  guess  at 
the  toil  that  went  to  a  perfect  paragraph. 
If  Max  Beerbohm  is  a  writer,  what  is  Theodore 
Dreiser?  I  suppose  the  only  answer  is  that  there 
are  many  mansions  in  the  city  of  writing,  and  that 
some  are  big,  rambling  and  spready,  and  that  others 
are  small,  neat  and  compact. 

Read  "That  Young,  Shy  Clergyman,"  by  Max 
Beerbohm.  Not  only  has  it  humour:  it  also  has  the 
humourous  outlook,  sly  yet  virile.  (Oh,  but  Mrs. 
Gaskell  might  have  been  Max's  literary  mother,  and 
Cranford  the  place  from  which  he  escaped  into  the 
larger  life  of  London,  where  he  was  tutored  by,  say, 
the  young  Disraeli). 
How  well  I  remember  his  nineties  story  called 


42  Authors  and  I 

"Knock  Soames"— just  nothing,  just  everything. 
"Enock  Soames"  was  republished  in  that  delightful 
book,  "Seven  Men."  I  had  written  about  it  in  a 
"Literary  Letter,"  and  the  next  week  was  obliged  to 
print  the  following — 

"A  correspondent  who  has  been  reading  Max  Beer- 
bohm's  'Seven  Men'  complains  that  he  has  carefully 
counted  the  list  and  can  only  find  six.  Ha,  ha! 
I  expected  that.  The  seventh  man  is,  of  course, 
Max  Beerbohm  himself.  He  is  implicit  on  every 
page  of  this  delightful  book." 

"A  Christmas  Garland,"  parodies  the  writers  who 
interest  him.  He  tells  us  in  the  preface,  a  char 
acteristic  preface  (everything  about  Max  is  char 
acteristic),  how  he  came  to  write  these  parodies — 
so  alarmingly  good.  In  studying  his  contemporaries 
he  was  "learning  rather  what  to  avoid,"  and  "the 
book  itself  may  be  taken  as  a  sign  that  I  think  my 
own  style  is,  at  length,  more  or  less  formed."  You 
observe  the  pose,  as  of  a  Titan  relaxing  over  a  cup 
of  tea.  Like  Bernard  Shaw,  he  is  able,  while  taking 
himself  conscientiously,  seriously,  to  assume  a  play- 
hour  manner.  He  seems  indifferent,  but  inwardly 
he  is  tense  and  almost  pushing.  Christopher  in 
"The  Hand  of  Ethelberta"  might  have  had  Max 
Beerbohm  in  mind  when  he  said  to  Ethelberta — 
"Make  ambition  your  business  and  indifference  your 
relaxation,  and  you  will  succeed." 
He  succeeds,  but  this  elegant  figure,  when  you 
meet  him  at  parties  or  First  Nights,  never  seems  to 
be  giving  a  thought  to  success.  He  seems  to  live 
for  the  humour  of  life.  The  effort  tires  him,  but 


Max  Beerbohm  43 

he  never  quite  gives  up.  All  of  his  writings  have 
humour,  and  it  is  humour  of  rather  a  rare  kind. 
In  a  word,  he  is  a  cultured  humourist.  He  can 
always  amuse  the  stalls,  never  the  gallery.  Thack 
eray  is  on  his  shelves,  but  Dickens — I  doubt  it. 
Dear  me,  here  I  have  been  extolling  Max  Beerbohm 
as  a  writer,  and  have  not  yet  mentioned  the  fact 
that  he — also  draws.  Without  doubt  he  is  the 
first  of  British  caricaturists.  In  the  six  exhibitions 
of  his  drawings  that  have  been  held  since  1901  I 
am  sure  that  he  has  aroused  more  laughter  than  any 
two  other  caricaturists.  His  drawings  are  a  little 
unkind,  very  caustic,  uncannily  penetrating,  but  oh, 
so  witty!  He  is  a  man  of  affairs,  a  retiring  pub 
licist,  as  well  as  a  very  able  draftsman. 
Thirdly,  he  is  a  humourist  in  conversation.  He  it 
was  who  invented  the  story  about — let  me  call  him 
Sir  Goahead  Blank  who,  as  everybody  knows,  set 
himself  with  the  aid  of  his  accomplished  wife  to 
climb  to  the  pinnacle  of  London  society.  "Some 
times,"  said  Max,  "in  the  middle  of  the  night  I  am 
aroused  from  my  slumbers  by  a  faint  but  persistent 
noise.  I  lean  upon  my  elbow  listening,  then  relieved 
I  fall  back  upon  my  pillow  murmuring  to  myself— 
'It  is  only  Sir  Goahead  Blank,  climbing — climbing 
—climbing.' " 

He  was  the  brother,  or  half-brother,  I  forget  which, 
these  things  slip  from  the  memory,  of  Sir  Herbert 
Beerbohm  Tree.  A  friend  meeting  him  on  the 
street  one  day  said  to  him — "Well,  Max,  and  what 
literary  work  hive  you  in  hand  just  now?" 
To  which  Max  replied — "I  am  meditating  a  series 


44  Authors  and  I 

of  articles  on  the  brothers  of  great  men.  I  shall 
begin  with  Herbert." 

Max  Beerbohm  is  not  a  new  humourist.  He 
evaded  the  new  humour  which  flickered  in  London 
in  the  nineties,  and  which,  in  its  American  patent, 
is  flaming  in  the  United  States  today.  If  I  were 
a  magazine  editor  I  should  ask  Max  to  write  an 
article  on  American  humour  from  Artemus  Ward  to 
Don  Marquis.  Then  I  should  retire  to  Tahiti  for 
a  year. 


7.     HILAIRE  BELLOC 

T  PREFER  Bclloc's  writings  to  Chesterton's.  He 
A  is  more  disagreeable,  but  he  is  saner ;  he  touches 
my  imagination  more  readily,  and  he  makes  me 
laugh  louder  and  oftener.  I  have  just  re-read 
Belloc's  "The  Path  to  Rome,"  and  if  you  know  of 
any  modern  book  with  greater  gusto,  ampler 
humour,  and  a  more  fervid  love  of  places  and 
characters,  I  beg  you  to  give  me  its  name.  I  do  not 
care  tuppence  about  the  purpose  of  his  tramp;  but 
I  do  care  immensely  for  it  as  a  travel  book,  a  wander 
document  from  the  delightful  preface  called 
''Praise  of  This  Book"  to  the  final  "Dithyrambic 
Epithalamium  or  Threnody"  doggerel  beginning — 

In  these  boots,  and  with  this  staff 
Two  hundred  leaguers  and  a  half 
Walked  I,  went  I,  paced,  tripped  I, 
Marched  I,  held  I,  skelped  I,  slipped  I, 
Pushed  I,  panted,  swung  and  dashed  I, 
Picked  I,  forded,  swam  and  splashed  I, 
Strolled  I,  climbed  I,  crawled  and  scrambled, 
Dropped  and  dipped  I,  ranged  and  rambled.  .  .  . 

Is  there  anybody  who  has  a  finer  and  fuller  love  of 
Place?  Some  years  ago  there  appeared  in  the  West 
minster  Gazette  several  third-of-a-column  essays  by 
him  on  French  places.  The  series  was  called  "Little 
Towns":  his  pen  gave  personality  to  each  of  these 
45 


46  Authors  and  I 

half -forgotten  towns.  I  could  walk  through  France 
seeking  them,  and  when  I  find  them  they  will  be 
old  friends. 

He  is  a  copious  writer — very  copious — and  he  writes 
as  easily  as  he  talks ;  so  some  of  his  travel  books  are 
less  good  than  others.  In  a  genial  mood  he  might 
call  them  "hack  work" ;  but  even  his  potboilers  are 
redeemed  by  the  Bellocian  gusto,  his  broad  geo 
graphical  outlook,  his  grasp  of  history,  and  his 
sense  of  form.  "Hills  and  the  Sea"  was  a  spacious, 
breezy  volume,  and  "The  River  of  London"  and 
"The  Stane  St."  seemed  to  treat  of  eternity,  not  of 
time. 

Perhaps  it  is  not  wise  to  hear  him  lecture.  His 
matter  is  solid,  sententious,  with  sardonic  and  arro 
gant  humorous  asides,  and  his  assurance  is  amazing. 
In  manner  he  is  rather  like  a  bull  in  a  meadow,  and 
as  he  proceeds,  ramping  and  tossing,  although  I 
appreciate  his  knowledge  and  power  of  expression, 
I  feel  that  I  like  him  less  and  less.  There  is  too 
much  of  the  schoolmaster  in  him,  too  much  of  the 
pope. 

He  is  the  kind  of  man  who  would  not  wait  to  be 
elected  pope;  he  would  take  his  seat,  and  then 
defend  it  without  pity  and  without  compromise.  At 
the  opening  of  the  Great  War  he  stepped  upon  the 
throne  of  authority,  and  the  British  public,  being 
rather  bewildered,  hardly  knowing  where  to  look 
for  a  mentor,  accepted  Hilaire  Belloc  as  military 
guide,  philosopher,  and  friend.  He  issued  his 
ukases  in  the  pages  of  the  weekly  journal,  Land  and 
Water,  and  as  at  the  very  beginning,  before  any 


Hilaire  Belloc  47 

news  had  come  through,  he  announced  that  Ger 
many  would  sweep  through  Belgium,  we  accepted 
him  as  One  Who  Knows.  It  was  easy  for  him  to 
play  that  role,  as  that  has  been  the  role  he  has 
always  played,  ever  since  he  began  to  write  and  talk. 
He  prophesied  on  the  future  of  the  war;  he  com 
mented  with  an  "I-told-you-so  manner"  on  the  past  ; 
he  made  his  own  plans  and  diagrams.  For  he  is  a 
draftsman,  too,  a  kind  of  artist  (see  "The  Path  to 
Rome"),  who,  like  lesser  men,  finds  it  difficult  to 
make  snow  mountains  sit  back  in  their  place  in  a 
picture.  But  the  Great  War  proved  too  great  for 
the  prophets.  They  all  tumbled  down.  Just  when 
Hilaire  Belloc  tumbled  I  know  not,  for  after  some 
months  I  ceased  to  read  his  pontifical  prognostica 
tions.  His  three  or  four  books  about  the  war— 
"The  First  Phase,"  "The  Second  Phase,"  and  so  on 
— have  gone  into  the  "not  wanted"  corner  of  my 
library. 

Nevertheless  Belloc  makes  a  fine  showing  on  my 
shelves.  Whenever  I  open  them  I  take  delight  in 
"Lambkin's  Remains,"  "Mr.  Burden,"  and  "The 
Four  Men."  These  are  the  works  of  a  Man  of 
Letters  who  is  speaking  for  himself,  not  to  a 
brief.  His  novels  are  dull.  Most  Men  of  Letters 
want  to  write  fiction,  most  fail.  The  teller  of  tales 
needs  a  special  kind  of  outfit.  It  is  quite  possible 
to  know  all  about  Romance,  and  yet  not  be  able  to 
write  it.  With  his  history  books  I  am  not 
enamoured.  If  ever  I  do  want  to  know  anything 
about  "Robespierre,"  "Danton,"  "Mary  Antoin 
ette,"  which  is  not  often,  I  go  to  a  cyclopaedia.  But 


48  Authors  and  1 

his  essays  are  very  readable:  they  have  more  struc 
ture  and  less  ornament  than  Mr.  Chesterton's. 
From  1906  to  1910  he  was  Member  of  Parliament, 
in  the  Liberal  interest,  for  South  Salford;  but  he 
was  not  a  success.  Members  of  Parliament,  with 
all  their  faults,  have  views,  and  they  object  to  being 
driven  and  herded  except  by  their  chiefs.  Per 
suasion  may  mollify  them,  but  not  arrogance.  I 
have  not  read  his  book,  "The  Party  System,"  which 
he  wTrote  in  conjunction  with  Mr.  Chesterton. 
Hilaire  Belloc  was  educated  at  the  Oratory  School, 
Edgbaston,  and  at  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  where 
he  was  the  Brackenbury  history  scholar  and  first 
class  in  honour  history  schools.  Between  school  and 
college  he  served  as  a  driver  in  the  eighth  regiment 
of  French  artillery  at  Toul,  Meurthe-et-Moselle. 
Thus  early  in  life  we  find  him  eager  in  pursuit  and 
in  practice  of  his  two  chief  subjects — the  Mind  of 
History  and  the  Mind  of  Soldiering. 
He  enlisted  in  the  French  Army  because  he  is  of 
French  extraction.  His  father  was  a  French  bar- 
rirter;  his  mother,  an  Englishwoman,  was  descended 
from  Dr.  Joseph  Priestley,  discoverer  of  "dephlogis- 
ticated  air"  or  oxygen.  He  was  also  minister  of  a 
congregation  in  Suffolk,  and  later  a  citizen  of  the 
French  Republic.  Mr.  Belloc,  in  "Who's  Who," 
is  silent  about  Dr.  Priestley.  It  is  his  sister,  the 
novelist,  who  obliges  with  the  information. 
Like  all  well-brought-up  Men  of  Letters,  Mr. 
Hilaire  Belloc  is  also  a  poet.  At  the  age  of  25  he 
published  "Verses  and  Sonnets,"  and  since  then  he 
has,  intermittently,  broken  into  verse.  One  of  his 


Hilaire  Belloc  49 

poems  is  famous  and  fine.  It  is  in  the  "Anthol 
ogies,"  and  it  gives  Sussex  men  an  advantage  over 
men  of  Kent  and  Surrey.  They  have  no  such  song 
as  Hilaire  Belloc's  song  in  praise  of  Sussex,  of 
which  I  quote  four  of  the  ten  stanzas: 

When  I  am  living  in  the  Midlands 

That  are  sodden  and  unkind, 

I  light  ray  lamp  in  the  evening: 

My  work  is  left  behind; 

And  the  great  hills  of  the  South  Country 

Come  back  into  my  mind. 

The  great  hills  of  the  South  Country 

They  stand  along  the  sea; 

And  it's  there,  walking  in  the  high  woods, 

That  I  could  wish  to  be, 

And  the  men  that  were  boys  when  I  was  a  boy 

Walking  along  with  me. 

I  will  gather  and  carefully  make  my  friends 

Of  the  men  of  the  Sussex  Weald. 

They  watch  the  stars  from  silent  folds, 

They  stiffly  plough  the  field. 

By  them  and  the  God  of  the  South  Country 

My  poor  soul  shall  be  healed. 

If  I  ever  become  a  rich  man, 

Or  if  ever  I  grow  to  be  old, 

I  will  build  a  house  with  deep  thatch 

To  shelter  me  from  the  cold, 

And  there  shall  the  Sussex  songs  be  sung 

And  the  story  of  Sussex  be  told. 

History,   Politics,   Warmongering,   Essay  Writing, 
Controversy — what  arc  they  to  a  song? 


8.    ARNOLD  BENNETT 

THAT  dynamo,  Enoch  Arnold  Bennett,  began 
to  function  in  1867.  He  is  now  very  famous 
and  very  rich.  This  is  precisely  what  that  dynamo, 
which  has  dropped  the  Enoch,  and  now  calls  itself 
Arnold  Bennett,  intended  should  happen.  What  he 
intends  docs  happen.  Odd,  but  provable. 
I  have  known  three  or  four  great  men  in  my  time; 
all  had,  incidentally,  moods,  miseries,  and  weak 
nesses.  E.  A.  B.,  for  so,  occasionally,  he  has  called 
himself,  is  without  moods,  miseries,  or  weaknesses. 
He  may  have  had  them  once,  but  being  unprofitable 
for  the  life  work  he  ordained  for  himself — to  become 
rich  and  famous — he  at  once  expelled  them  from  his 
organisation. 

Arnold  Bennett  is  not  only  a  dynamo;  he  is  also 
the  controller  of  the  dynamo.  I  mean  by  this  that 
his  well-controlled  will  can  order  his  well-controlled 
mentality  to  do  exactly  what  the  will  dictates.  In 
spiration,  ecstasy,  loafing,  and  inviting  the  soul — 
what  are  such  things  to  him?  Nothing.  Dynamos 
don't  have  ecstasies.  Dynamos  don't  loaf. 
He  is  the  controller  of  the  machine  that  converts 
mental  energy  into  ten  pound  ($50  or  so)  per 
thousand  words  energy.  So  good  are  these  words,  so 
efficient  is  the  driving  force  of  the  dynamo,  that  one 
of  the  modest  pleasures  of  my  life  is  a  new  Mood, 
50 


Arnold  Bennett  51 

a  new  Fantasia,  a  new  Frolic,  a  new  Play,  a  new 
Pocket  Philosophy,  or  a  new  "Miscellaneous"  by 
Arnold  Bennett.  I  am  never  disappointed.  The 
adventure  is  like  buying  goods  at  an  old  established, 
reliable  London  shop.  Whatever  you  purchase— 
shirts,  braces,  or  collars— you  know  that  they  will 
be  of  the  best  material  and  the  best  workmanship, 
honestly  made,  "all  wool  and  a  yard  wide,"  without 
fripperies  or  fal-lals,  and  the  buttons  will  never 
drop  off.  "But,"  the  intelligent  reader  interjects, 
"Arnold  Bennett,  you  know,  wrote  one  novel  of 
genius,  'The  Old  Wives1  Tale/  perhaps  two." 
True.  He  wrote  a  novel  of  genius,  perhaps  two, 
because  the  controlling  will  of  this  dynamo  re 
marked  :  "The  time  has  come  to  write  a  novel  of 
genius.  Begin  tomorrow  morning  at  8.55.  That 
will  give  you  five  minutes  to  wash  out  your  ink 
bottle  and  fill  it  with  the  excellent  anti-corrosive 
fluid  you  discovered  yesterday." 
But  I  am  going  too  quickly.  I  am  giving  the  present 
aspect  of  the  Arnold  Bennett  edifice  without  refer 
ence  to  the  architectonic  intelligence  that  produced 
the  edifice.  It  was  my  privilege,  for  a  time,  to 
watch  the  edifice  rising,  and  it  was  as  plain  as  an 
advertisement  in  a  tram-car,  even  in  those  long  past 
days,  that  the  edifice  would  rise  to  stately  propor 
tions.  That  was  inevitable,  because  Arnold  Ben 
nett  was  the  architect,  the  builder,  the  contractor, 
and  the  edifice. 

Toward  the  end  of  last  century,  I  was  editing 
The  Academy  and  seeking  daily  for  new  writers 
with  nimble  pens.  My  tenure  of  the  editorial  chair 


52  Authors  and  I 

(it  was  the  new  swivel-kind,  and  considered  rather 
chic  in  those  days),  began  in  1896,  the  year  in 
which  Enoch  Arnold  Bennett  succeeded  to  the 
editorship  of  Woman,  a  penny  weekly. 
Soon  I  subscribed  to  Woman,  not  because  I  was 
particularly  interested  in  woman,  but  because  this 
paper  was  edited  with  spirit,  finesse,  and  male- 
sense,  and  because  there  was  a  column  of  Book 
Notes  signed  May,  or  Rosalind,  or  Sophy,  or  some 
such  name,  which  was  so  good  that  I  yearned  to 
acquire  the  writer  for  the  journal  I  was  editing.  In 
a  month  or  two  I  discovered  that  May,  or  Rosalind, 
or  Sophy  was  E.  A.  B.  or  Enoch  Arnold  Bennett. 
A  little  diplomacy,  a  little  flattery  and  the  dynamo 
presented  itself  at  my  office  for  a  talk.  Within  a 
few  minutes  he  had  told  me  how  my  paper  should 
be  edited — categorically  and  vehemently.  That 
was  and  is  Arnold  Bennett's  way.  I  have  no  doubt 
that  since  he  has  become  famous  and  has  met  many 
distinguished  men  he  has  told  Mr.  David  Lloyd 
George  how  to  run  the  British  Empire,  and  Mr. 
Woodrow  Wilson  how  to  circumvent  the  Republi 
cans,  etc,  etc.  That  is  his  way.  His  foible  is  om 
niscience.  Who  but  Arnold  Bennett  could  or  would 
have  found  time  amid  the  aesthetic  attractions  and 
financial  allurements  of  novel  writing  and  play- 
writing  to  instruct  the  proletariat  in  "Mental  Effi 
ciency"  and  "How  to  Live  on  24  Hours  a  Day." 
That  first  interview  with  Arnold  Bennett  told  me 
that,  at  any  cost,  I  must  persuade  him  to  join  our 
staff:  the  first  article  he  wrote  assured  me  that  at 
any  cost  I  must  keep  him  there.  He  never  wrote 


Arnold  Bennett  53 

a  superfluous  word,  every  sentence  told;  he  had 
sound  opinions  upon  everything;  and  his  sledge-ham 
mer  manner  of  stating  those  opinions,  what  a  relief 
it  was  after  reading  proofs  of  reviews  and  articles 
by  the  ordinary  young  man  with  the  ordinary  artis 
tic  temperament.  I  never  altered  a  word  in  an 
Arnold  Bennett  proof.  And  there  was  rarely  an 
erasure  in  his  copy.  His  orderly  mind  said  to  his 
obedient  hand:  "Write  my  masterly  and  masterful 
thoughts  in  copperplate  calligraphy,  always  with 
the  same  number  of  words  upon  a  page,  for  though 
I  suspect  that  I  have  the  artistic  temperament  I  am 
also  a  business  man,  and  a  man  of  affairs,  and  it  is 
those  qualities  that  \Vill  advance  me  quickly  in  the 
world." 

As  a  writer  of  reviews  and  articles  he  was  capable, 
conscientious  and  incredibly  hard  working.  E.  A.  B. 
was  determined  to  leam  the  business  of  writing 
thoroughly.  He  was  not  going  to  take  any  chances. 
I  wonder  if  he  remembers  the  labour  he  put  into  a 
review  of  a  new  translation  of  Balzac.  The  article 
in  two  parts  was  a  miracle  of  research  and  wisdom. 
He  knew  it  would  pay  him — wise  youth.  That 
labour  taught  him  all  he  needed  to  know  about  the 
construction  of  the  Balzac  novel.  He  was  the  most 
valuable  member  of  the  staff.  I  knew  it.  He 
knew  it.  So  I  was  not  surprised  when  one  day  he 
demanded  a  50  per  cent  increase  of  pay.  Of  course 
I  meekly  assented.  I  would  have  assented  even  if 
I  had  been  forced  to  deduct  the  extra  honorarium 
(that's  what  we  called  it:  honorarium  sounded 
better  than  pay)  from  my  own  salary.  A  good 


54  Authors  and  I 

editor  knows  when  he  has  a  good  thing.  Bennett 
has  described  this  advance  in  his  honorarium  in  the 
preface  to  "The  Truth  About  an  Author,"  a  per 
fectly  delightful  and  humorously  cynical  account  of 
his  own  career  which  has  a  merit  most  autobiog 
raphies  lack — it  is  true.  Consequently  many 
reviewers  disliked  it  extremely.  The  passage  runs: 
"I  well  remember  the  day  when,  by  dint  of  amicable 
menaces,  I  got  the  rate  raised  in  my  favour  from 
10  to  15  shillings  a  column,  with  a  minimum  of  two 
guineas  an  article  for  exposing  the  fatuity  of  pop 
ular  idols." 

He  has  become  a  popular  idol  himself  and  he  has 
strenuously  striven  to  keep  the  popular  idol  class 
select.  In  the  words  of  the  old  song — "There's  flies 
on  me,  there's  flies  on  you,  but  there  ain't  no  flies  on 
Arnold."  Between  1908  and  1911  under  the  pseu 
donym  of  "Jacob  Tonson"  in  the  New  Age  he 
revalued  all  the  current  popular  and  unpopular 
idols.  Excellent  reading  were  these  corybantic 
essays:  excellent  reading  they  are  today  in  the 
volume  called  "Books  and  Persons." 
While  he  was  writing  them  he  was  himself  becoming 
daily  more  of  a  popular  idol.  Rather  piquant,  eh? 
But  he  was  not  in  the  least  surprised  by  his  pop 
ularity.  His  will  had  planned  it,  therefore  the 
popularity  followed. 

One  afternoon,  just  after  the  new  century  had 
turned,  somewhat  impressed  by  the  immense  amount 
of  time  and  effort  he  was  putting  into  reviews  and 
other  ephemera,  I  said  to  him,  "What  about  your 
future?  What  arc  you  going  to  do?" 


Arnold  Bennett  55 

Readily,  always  ready  is  E.  A.  B.,  he  answered, 
"It's  all  arranged.  I  shall  write  two  novels  for 
fame,  two  for  fun,  two  for  money;  plays  I  shall 
treat  in  the  same  way,  and  I  shall  live  for  a  time  in 
France  and  marry  a  French  girl." 
Which  is  precisely  what  he  has  done — and  more, 
much  more. 

The  problem  now  is— What  next?  Happy  thought! 
Why  should  he  not  write  another  novel  of  genius? 
Meanwhile  I  sit  down  to  re-read  his  frolic  called 
"A  Great  Man."  It  is  vastly  entertaining;  but 
there  is  more  in  it  than  mere  fun.  This  frolic  is  a 
criticism  of  life.  Perhaps  there  is  more  in  it  than 
Arnold  Bennett  thinks.  Oh,  no,  that's  impossible. 


9.     G.  K.  CHESTERTON 

HAVE  busied  myself  with  many  of  his  many 
•*•  books,  and  I  have  wearied  of  his  paradoxes  and 
rhetorical  gallivanting.  I  find  the  utmost  difficulty 
in  getting  to  the  end  of  an  article  by  him;  but  I 
persevere  because  if  he  annoys  me  seven  times  he 
stimulates  me  twice.  That  is  about  the  proportion. 
My  eyes  rove  down  his  columns  for  the  flashes 
of  insight.  I  read  them  twice  and  skip  the  rest. 
Yes,  he  does  give  us,  in  everything  he  writes,  these 
flashes  of  insight.  He  cannot  help  them,  they  are 
himself,  and  apparently  he  does  not  know  and  does 
not  care  whether  he  produces  flashes  of  insight  or 
horse-collar  jokes. 

Editors  regard  him  as  a  popular  teacher  and  direc 
tor,  but  is  he?  Those  who  read  him  do  so  for  his 
Chestertonisms,  for  his  fun,  for  his  chunks  of  com 
mon  sense,  and  they  try  to  forgive  him  for  his 
belief  that  if  you  say  a  good  thing  once,  it  becomes 
twice  as  good  if  you  say  it  twice.  But  they  do 
not  read  him  for  his  message.  What  is  his  mes 
sage?  Does  any  reader  get  anything  from  his  book 
on  Divorce,  except  that  in  the  recesses  of  his  alert 
hide-and-seek  brain  he  has  beautiful  mystical 
thoughts  about  marriage?  Really  I  do  not  think 
it  matters  much  what  Mr.  Chesterton's  subject  is. 
Stardust,  Lobsters,  Bric-a-brac,  Ireland — the  subject 
56 


G.  K.  Chesterton  57 

is  merely  a  peg  to  hang  Chestertonian  daydreams 
on.  His  method  is  simple.  He  might  begin  an  essay 
thus:  "You  may  think  that  in  the  jungle  a  tiger 
acts  like  a  tiger.  It  does  not:  it  acts  like  a  geranium. 
The  reasons  arc  obvious.  .  .  ." 
He  is  a  figure  in  the  literary  world  in  a  wider  sense 
than  usual.  Usually  and  rightly  an  author's  per 
sonal  appearance  is  regarded  as  something  separate 
and  apart  from  his  writings,  as  sacred  as  his  home 
life.  But  Mr.  Chesterton's  great  bulk,  massive 
face,  and  wild  crop  of  untidy  hair  are  as  well  known 
and  popular  as  were  Dr.  Johnson's  appearance  and 
idiosyncrasies.  Each  is  a  legend.  Chesterton  himself 
is  by  no  means  shy  on  the  subject.  It  is  on  record 
that,  at  a  public  dinner,  a  speaker  said  that  Chester 
ton's  chivalry  is  so  splendid  that  he  had  been  known 
to  rise  in  a  tramcar  and  offer  his  seat  to  three  ladies. 
Mr.  A.  G.  Gardiner,  who  tells  this  story,  adds  that 
Mr.  Chesterton's  laughter  sounded  high  above  all 
the  rest.  "You  may  laugh  with  him,  and  at  him, 
and  about  him,"  adds  Mr.  Gardiner,  "but  there  is 
one  thing,  and  one  only,  about  which  he  is  serious, 
and  that  is  his  own  seriousness." 
It  is  this  seriousness  that  the  reader  loves  to  track, 
to  pick  it  from  the  bustling  byways  and  the  bursting 
fireworks  of  his  prose;  to  track  in  the  pages  of 
"Heretics,"  "Dickens,"  "Browning,"  "Tremendous 
Trifles,"  "Alarms  and  Discussions,"  "A  Short  His 
tory  of  England,"  "The  Crimes  of  England," 
"What's  Wrong  with  the  World."  I  admit  that 
I  would  not  do  it  for  pleasure.  A  chapter  in  each 
book  is  about  all  I  can  assimilate.  For,  after  all, 


58  Authors  and  I 

Chesterton  has  few  surprises.  He  has  a  typical 
Protestant  mind,  yet  he  loves  ritual,  superstition, 
legends,  saints,  fairies,  and  he  still  believes,  so  he 
has  told  us,  that  the  moon  is  made  of  green  cheese ; 
he  is  always  for  the  under  dog,  the  voiceless,  and 
the  lost  cause;  he  is  a  Little  Englander,  an  Eng 
lishman  who  resents  Belfast  and  reacts  rhythmically 
to  Dublin. 

I  have  often  wondered  how  the  rectory  public  that 
subscribes  to  The  Illustrated  London  News  likes 
the  page  he  writes  each  week  and  if  they  approved 
of  the  change  from  the  popular  erudition  of  George 
Augustus  Sala,  and  the  cheerful  humanity  of  James 
Payn.  That  page,  "Our  Note  Book,"  was,  for  a 
time,  handed  over  to  Hilaire  Belloc.  Strange  how 
these  two  literary  men,  these  two  mediaevalists 
have  run  together  through  the  present  century.  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw  noted  this  and  invented  a  two-faced 
capering  and  combative  elephant,  which  he  called 
the  "Chester-Belloc." 

Mr.  Chesterton  is  the  outstanding  type  of  the  lit 
erary  journalist.  It  is  as  an  essayist  that  he  earns 
his  living  and  wins  his  fame.  I  fancy  that  he  would, 
if  he  could,  be  a  maker  of  romances  and  draw  as 
near  to  the  success  of  Stevenson  as  the  public  would 
allow.  He  does  not  succeed.  I  can  enjoy  passages 
of  "Manalive,"  "The  Flying  Inn,"  "The  Napoleon 
of  Notting  Hill,"  and  "The  Man  Who  Was 
Thursday,"  but  reading  them  through  is  an  effort. 
They  are  shaped  like  romance;  they  ought  to  be 
riotously  romantic  and  funny,  but  they  are  not.  As 


G.  K.  Chesterton  59 

for  the  Father  Brown  detective  stories,  if  I  want 
to  read  such  things  I  go  to  Sherlock  Holmes. 
If  I  were  asked  to  select  three  of  Chesterton's 
books  for  a  public  library,  which  could  not  afford 
the  whole  of  his  Brobdingnagian  output,  my  choice 
would  fall  upon  his  "Browning,"  his  "Dickens"  and 
"Irish  Impressions." 

He  has  also  published  poems,  sometimes  humorous. 
Indeed,  it  was  as  a  poet,  the  author  of  "The  Wild 
Knight,"  that  I  first  heard  of  him.  He  was  a  great 
figure  in  Fleet  Street  even  in  those  days,  and  people 
would  say:  "Come,  quickly,  and  you  will  see  Gil 
bert  Chesterton  getting  out  of  a  cab."  Oh,  the 
stories !  It  is  said  that  he  was  driving  in  Paris,  and 
his  companion,  a  novelist-publisher,  remarked, 
"They  all  seem  to  know  you."  To  which  G.  K.  C. 
replied,  "Yes,  and  if  they  don't  they  ask."  And  I 
remember  one  evening  in  London  when,  to  every 
body's  delight  (it  is  the  way  of  erring  human  nature 
to  jest  at  its  benefactors)  somebody  read  aloud 
G.  K.  C.'s  verses  on  the  Shakespeare  Memorial 
Committee.  It  begins: 

Lord  Lilac  thought  it  rather  rotten 
That  Shakespeare  should  be  quite  forgotten, 
And  therefore  got  on  a  committee 
With  several  chaps  out  of  the  city, 
And  Shorter  and  Sir  Herbert  Tree, 
Lord  Rothschild  and  Lord  Rosebery 
And  F.  C.  G.  and  Corny ns  Carr, 
Two  dukes  and  a  dramatic  star.  .  .  . 

But  as  a  poet  he  can  be  very  serious  and  very  fine. 
It  is  quite  likely  that  "The  Wiltf  Knight"  and 


60  Authors  and  I 

"The  Ballad  of  the  White  Horse"  (a  ballad  that 
took  the  bit  between  its  teeth  and  raced  into  a 
book),  and  his  "Lepanto,"  a  poem  that  has  already 
drifted  into  the  Anthologies,  will  be  read  when 
"Heretics"  and  "Tremendous  Trifles"  are  forgotten. 
Somebody  should  always  be  standing  by  his  side  when 
he  is  writing  essays,  saying,  "Gilbert  be  dull  for  a 
bit.  Paradox  should  be  a  souffle,  not  a  joint." 


10.    JOSEPH  CONRAD 

TS  it,  can  it  be  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  since 
•*•  I  sat  one  summer  afternoon  on  the  sands  at 
Sandgate,  Kent,  with  H.  G.  Wells  and  Joseph  Con 
rad?  Wells  was  our  host.  He  was  living  then  at 
the  charming  Voysey  house  he  had  built  on  the  cliff 
perched  between  Folkestone  and  Hythe.  I  had  come 
from  London.  Conrad  had  emerged  from  the  in 
land  farmhouse  where  he  was  then  living,  working 
at,  I  fancy,  "The  Nigger  of  the  Narcissus,"  which 
was  published  in  1897.  I  remember  H.  G.'s  quick, 
blue,  watching,  amused  eyes,  and  intriguing  manner 
with  a  touch  of  asperity;  such  a  contrast  to  Con 
rad's  virility  and  violence  of  utterance.  I  re 
member  watching  Conrad  dig  his  hands  fiercely  into 
the  loose  sand,  and  say,  "Ah,  if  only  I  could  write 
zee  English  good,  well.  But  you  see,  you  will 
see!" 

Joseph  Conrad  is  eager  and  forthright,  as  prompt 
in  speech  as  in  action,  which  is  what  we  might 
expect  from  a  "Master  in  the  Merchant  Service" 
who  has  spent  many  years  of  his  life  at  sea.  His 
literary  style  is  as  broad,  deep  and  full  as  a  rolling 
Atlantic  breaker.  He  handles  our  sonorous  and 
plangent  English  with  the  ease  that  a  captain 
handles  a  ship,  and  yet  he  is  not  an  Englishman.  He 
is  of  Polish  parentage;  he  tells  how,  on  long 
61 


62  Authors  and  I 

voyages,  he  learnt  the  way  to  use  words  in  the 
right  way,  in  the  great  way,  from  studying  the 
Bible  and  Shakespeare;  and,  as  I  have  said,  it 
was  not  so  many  years  ago,  that  he  told  us  how 
he  almost  despaired  of  ever  mastering  the  English 
tongue.  He  did  it.  There  is  a  foreign  inflexion  in 
his  speech,  never  in  his  prose.  Milton  might  have 
envied  the  colour  of  many  of  his  words. 
How  well  I  remember  the  time  when  his  short 
story,  "Youth,"  first  appeared  in  Blackwootfs 
Magazine,  about  1901.  I  read  it  on  a  long  train 
journey,  and  then  re-read  it,  because  I  was  still 
far  from  my  destination.  When  I  had  finished  it, 
I  wrote:  "Amazing!  This  may  be  the  best  short 
story  of  the  decade;  certainly  it  is  the  finest  state 
ment  in  literature  of  the  romantic  impact  of  the 
East  upon  the  West." 

You  preceive  that  I  read  and  re-read  "Youth"  on 
a  train  journey;  that  is,  I  gave  it  my  mind  and 
my  undivided  attention.  Perhaps,  if  I  were  to 
read  a  long  novel  by  Conrad  in  that  way,  say  "Lord 
Jim"  or  "Typhoon,"  I  should  admire  the  innumer 
able  pages  as  much  as  I  admire  slender  "Youth"; 
but  a  busy  man  rarely  has  time  to  read  long 
novels  carefully.  Who  has?  And  yet  I  feel  that 
I  ought  to  read  Conrad  carefully,  as  he  is  a  writer's 
writer,  as  Manet  was  a  painter's  painter,  and  my 
young  literary  friends  call  him  Master.  So,  when 
Land  and  Water  arrived  in  America  with  the  first 
installment  of  "The  Rescue,"  I  said  to  myself: 
"Here  is  a  chance  to  make  up  my  mind  about  Joseph 
Conrad.  I  can  read,  and  re-read  this  installment  of 


Joseph  Conrad  63 

'The   Rescue*   in  an  hour — an   hour  of  my  mind 
and  my  undivided  attention." 

To  produce  such  prose  requires  composure  and  con 
centration.  And  as  for  the  architecture  of  the  open 
ing  of  this  story,  I  find  in  it  the  same  kind  of  method 
that  Mr.  Conrad  employs  in  many  other  of  his 
romances  that  I  have  read  or  skipped.  He  delights 
to  take  some  vast,  outlying  immensity  of  ocean  and 
sky  with  hints  of  land,  where  little  cellular  beings 
called  men  dwell.  You  must  be  patient  while  he 
is  developing  his  immensity;  then,  you  will  view 
with  relief  the  introduction,  at  first  hardly  more 
than  ejaculations,  of  the  little  cellular  beings  called 
men  into  this  expanse  of  immensity,  but  presently 
and  gradually  the  man  or  men  become  characterised 
swiftly  and  neatly.  Follows  more  immensity,  and 
the  little  men  in  the  vastness  begin  to  assume  shape, 
form  and  disposition,  and  so  on,  and  so  on,  until 
man  takes  his  place  in  the  Conradian  immensity. 

•     *     *     * 

Since  the  above  was  written  I  have  read  in  book 
form  "The  Rescue,"  which  he  began,  worked  on  for 
a  time,  and  then  dropped  twenty  years  ago.  I  feel 
about  it  as  I  felt  about  "The  Arrow  of  Gold," 
and  other  of  Conrad's  novels.  I  am  intensely  in- 
terested  in  the  art  with  which  he  drops  Man  into 
the  Immensity  of  his  landscape,  but  I  am  little 
interested  in  the  story  he  tells.  The  opening  of  "The 
Rescue"  thrilled  me  as  before,  but  as  the  story  pro 
gressed  my  interest  flagged.  The  art  of  writing  is 
stronger  in  Conrad  than  the  art  of  story-telling. 


64  Authors  and  I 

So  with  the  small  book  by  him  called  "A  Personal 
Record,"  telling  how  "Almayer's  Folly"  was  writ 
ten,  so  with  the  Prefaces  to  the  new  editions  of 
his  books.  I  begin  with  avidity,  I  seem  ever  on  the 
threshold  of  learning  something,  and  becoming  a 
Conrad  enthusiast ;  but  the  conversion  never  comes, 
and  I  turn  with  hope  to  the  next  Preface,  or  the 
next  book. 

The  Conrad  enthusiasts  are  so  many  that  my  defec 
tion  may  be  overlooked.  Once  when  I  was  asked 
which  of  his  works  leads  me  nearest  to  enthusiasm, 
I  answered  "The  Nigger  of  the  Narcissus"  and  the 
short  story  "Youth." 

The  Bible  and  Shakespeare  may  have  moulded 
Conrad's  style,  as  his  years  at  sea  gave  him  knowl 
edge  of  the  ways  of  the  ocean,  and  the  men  who  go 
down  to  it  in  great  ships.  Is  it  not  wonderful  that 
.a  Pole  should  be  able  thus  to  fuse  manner  and  ma 
terial  and  make  romances  in  an  alien  tongue?  This 
is  a  mystery  of  the  craft — or  of  genius. 
You  cannot  say  that  reading  "The  Tempest"  gave 
Conrad  his  insight  into  the  ways  of  seafarers;  you 
cannot  say  that  chancing  upon  a  copy  of  Chaucer's 
"Parliament  of  Fowls"  put  John  Mascfield  in 
the  way  of  writing  "Salt  Water  Ballads"  and  "The 
Everlasting  Mercy."  Chaucer  gave  him  the  start, 
and  then  followed  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Keats  and 
Shelley.  But  these  were  but  fuel.  The  fire  was 
there.  So  with  Conrad.  The  fire  to  write  was 
smouldering  within  him  in  his  Polish  home,  and  the 
spark  came,  and  the  fuel  came,  as  the  wind  comes, 
where  it  listeth. 


11.     KENYON  COX 

SHE  had  been  reading  Kenyon  Cox's  last  article. 
It  was  on  "German  Painting."  But  I  doubt  if 
she  reached  the  end  of   the  essay,   for  the  paper 
wherein  it  was  published  had  fallen  from  her  hands, 
and  she  was  almost  crying. 
"Tut!  Tut!"  I  said.    "What  is  it?" 
"Lots    of    things,"    she    answered,     "but    chiefly 
memories.     Oh,  while  people  are  hailing  Kenyon 
Cox  as  a  great  mural  painter,  to  me  he  was  just — a 
poet." 

She  turned  away.  For  some  reason  or  another  she 
was  disturbed.  So  I  talked. 

"Kenyon  Cox  was  a  better  writer  than  painter,"  I 
said.  "He  was  an  artist  in  words,  if  you  like; 
he  was  never  an  artist  in  paint.  His  pictures  are 
commonplace,  formal ;  but,  in  his  writings,  he  some 
times  ascends  to  the  threshold  of  the  Initiates.  It 
is  given  to  few  to  excel  in  the  two  crafts  of  writing 
and  painting." 

"If  William  Hunt,  author  of  'Talks  on  Art/  had 

been  able  to  paint  as  well  as  he  wrote  about  painting, 

what  a  great  artist  he  would  have  been.     He  it 

who,  when  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  handed  him 

a  Chinese  vase,  asking  if  he  would  like  to  see  it, 

answered:  'Like  to  see  it?     By  Gosh,  it's  one  of 

those  dashed  ultimate  things!'    There  is  more  real 

65 


66  Authors  and  I 

appreciation,  my  dear  lady,  in  that  slangy  sentence 
of  William  Hunt's  than  in  pages  of  tall  writing. 
Kenyon  Cox  would  have  taken  a  chapter  to  say  it, 
and  please  understand  that  he  would  have  said  it 
charmingly.  Hunt  was  a  torrent.  Cox  was  a 
gliding  stream." 

Here  I  paused,  because  the  lady  was  not  listening. 
"How  strange,"  she  said,  "and  how  enviable  to 
be  remembered  by  one  little  poem.  It  must  be  thirty 
years  ago  since  I  first  read  it.  We  were  living  by 
the  sea,  a  lonely  place  in  a  remote  part  of  Europe; 
and  one  day,  oh,  how  well  I  remember  it,  dear 

B and  C surprised  us  with  a  visit.    They 

were  on  their  honeymoon;  they  brought  us  all  the 
news  of  America,  and  among  other  odds  and  ends 
a  copy  of  the  current  Century  magazine.  In  it  was 
an  essay  by  Kenyon  Cox  on  'Early  Renaissance 
Sculpture,'  and  at  the  end  of  it  was  a  poem.  I  was 
younger  then,  and  it  moved  me  in  a  way  that  few 
poems  have  ever  moved  me.  It  was  inspired  by 
the  Temme  Inconnue,'  in  the  Louvre,  and  it  began: 

She  lived  in  Florence  centuries  ago, 
That  lady  smiling  there. 
What  was  her  name  or  rank  I  do  not  know— 
I  know  that  she  was  fair. 

I  have  been  trying  to  remember  the  rest  of  it,  but 
I  can  only  recall  detached  lines.  Do  find  it  for 
me.  And  the  sad  thing  is  that  I  have  a  copy  of  it 
somewhere,  and  I  can't  remember  where  it  is  hidden 
— a  copy  in  Kenyon  Cox's  own  handwriting.  Oh, 
how  kind  he  was!  It  happened  like  this:  Dear 


Kenyan  Cox  67 

C—  was  a  friend  of  Cox's,  and,  when  he  returned 
to  America,  he  told  him  of  my  love  for  the  poem. 
And  Kenyon  Cox  copied  it  out  and  sent  it  to  me, 
but  that  wasn't  all.  He  added  a  fourth  stanza 
which  the  magazine,  for  some  reason  or  other,  did 
not  print.  Somebody  told  me  that  the  Editor 
thought  it  was  not  quite  proper.  Entre  nous,  the 
poet,  in  that  rejected  stanza,  presses  a  kiss  upon  the 
lips  of  stone." 

The  lady  laughed  through  her  tears.  "I'll  have  a 
hunt  for  the  poem  tonight,"  she  said,  "but  I  am 
afraid  that  I  have  hidden  it  away  somewhere  so 
carefully  that  I  shall  never  find  it." 
Obviously  it  was  my  pleasure  to  track  the  poem. 
I  told  the  girl  librarian  at  one  of  the  New  York 
Branch  Libraries  about  it,  and  she  suggested  that 
I  should  consult  the  Century  Magazine  index.  That 
part  of  my  mission  failed.  I  became  so  interested 
in  the  writers  of  circa  1890  that  the  time  passed 
without  discovery  of  any  reference  to  "She  lived  in 
Florence  centuries  ago."  As  for  the  index,  well, 
you  know  what  indexes  arc.  I  have  never  been  able 
to  discover  anything  I  want  in  an  index  anywhere. 
The  girl  librarian  handed  me  more  copies  of  the 
Century,  and  offered  to  help  me  in  the  search.  I 
declined  graciously.  I  could  not  put  her  to  the 
trouble;  but  I  accepted  from  her  a  little  lot  of  books 
by  Kenyon  Cox.  On  the  way  home,  I  made  a  men 
tal  note  to  write  an  essay,  a  la  E.  V.  Lucas,  in 
quiring  why  librarian  girls  are  always  kind,  and 
telephone  girls  arc  always  cross.  Perhaps  it  is  be 
cause  one  sees  us  and  the  other  doesn't. 


68  Authors  and  I 

So  behold  me  that  afternoon,  engaged  on  a  task 
a  Bookman  loves,  the  task  or  the  joy  of  dipping  into 
an  author  with  whom  one  is  fairly  familiar.  I 
began  to  browse  on  Kenyon  Cox's  "Old  Masters 
and  New"  and  "Artist  and  Public";  I  dipped  here 
and  there,  feeling  sure  that  I  should  find  some 
where  a  clue  to  the  lost  poem. 
There  are  no  surprises  in  Kenyon  Cox,  and  shall 
I  add,  no  faults?  He  is  a  cultured  and  scholarly — 
conformist.  Compared  with  Cox,  John  Ruskin  was 
a  Bernard  Shaw,  and  William  Hunt  a  Clemenceau. 
Kenyon  Cox  was  always  on  the  side  of  order  and 
safety.  Even  his  insight  was  safety  first.  The  old  is 
according  to  law,  and  consequently  agreeable;  the 
new  is  irregular,  and  consequently  disagreeable. 
It  might  be  said  of  Kenyon  Cox  in  literature,  as  he 
says  of  his  contemporaries  in  painting:  "Our  most 
original  and  most  distinguished  painters,  those  who 
give  the  tone  to  our  exhibitions  and  the  national 
accent  to  our  school,  are  almost  all  engaged  in 
trying  to  get  back  one  or  another  of  the  qualities 
that  marked  the  great  art  of  the  past." 
The  new  art  of  the  present  he  disliked  extremely. 
Post-Impressionism  was  almost  evil,  Rodin's  draw 
ings  were  almost  a  disgrace;  but  I  did  not  dwell 
on  those  essays.  I  turned  to  where  he  dallies  lov 
ingly  with  some  phase  of  the  great  art  of  the  past; 
there  he  is  quite  at  home  and  a  charming  companion. 
And  so  I  came  at  twilight,  while  the  great  city 
hummed  below,  and  the  young  moon  with  one  lone 
star  peeped  out  above,  to  his  essay  on  "Sculptors  of 
the  Early  Italian  Renaissance."  If  I  had  to  choose 


Kenyan  Cox  69 

one  essay  by  Kenyon  Cox  for  an  Anthology,  this 
would  be  my  choice.  He  loved  the  subject;  his  love 
passes  on  to  us.  I  read  pages  1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7  with 
growing  delight  and,  when  I  turned  to  page  8 — 
there,  at  the  end,  was  the  poem.  My  feelings  can 
hardly  have  been  excelled  by  Peary  when  he  found 
the  North  Pole.  There  it  was — and  with  the 
missing  last  stanza: 

THE  "FEMME  INCONNUE"  OF  THE  LOUVRE 

She  lircd  in  Florence  centuries  ago, 

That  lady  smiling  there. 

What  was  her  name  or  rank  I  do  not  know — 

I  know  that  she  was  fair. 

For  some  great  man — his  name,  like  hers,  forgot 
And  faded  from  men's  sight — 

Loved  her — he  must  hare  loved  her — and  has  wrought 
This  bust  for  our  delight. 

Whether  he  gained  her  love  or  had  her  scorn, 
Full  happy  was  his  fate. 

He  saw  her,  heard  her  speak;  he  was  not  born 
Four  hundred  years  too  late. 

The  palace  throngs  in  every  room  but  thi»— 
Here  I  am  left  alone. 
Love,  there  is  none  to  tee — I  press  a  kit* 
Upon  thy  lips  of  stone. 

Surely,  we  may  absolve  that  Editor  of  thirty  years 
ago  of  prudery;  surely  he  omitted  the  last  stanza, 
because  it  is  weak — an  anti-climax.  The  poem  ends 
at  "Four  hundred  years  too  late." 


12.     STEPHEN  CRANE 

TO  have  written  "The  Red  Badge  of  Courage" 
before  he  was  25 ;  to  have  produced  all  of  his 
work  ere  the  age  of  30 — is  wonderful. 
Slender,  quiet,  and  neat;  unaffected,  unromantic, 
and  unobtrusive;  always  watchful  yet  always  seem 
ing  weary  and  brooding,  with  the  penetrating  blue 
eyes  of  the  visionary — so  I  saw,  and  remember 
Stephen  Crane — vividly.  That  was  in  the  summer 
of  1899. 

We  were  thrown  together  under  circumstances  that 
have  made  a  lasting  impression  upon  me.  He  had 
rented  Brede  Place,  in  Sussex,  and  there  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Crane  entertained  in  a  way  that  was  very 
original  if  seemingly  rather  extravagant. 
Brede  Place,  I  should  explain,  is  one  of  the  oldest 
manor-houses  in  Sussex,  standing  in  a  vast  untidy 
park.  At  that  time  the  owners  had  not  lived  there 
for  some  years;  house  and  park  had  been  neglected, 
and  it  would  have  cost  a  small  fortune  to  give  the 
place  the  patted  and  petted  look  of  propriety  in 
which  Englishmen  love  to  garb  their  estates.  How 
old  Brede  Place  is  I  know  not,  but  I  well  remember 
a  stand  for  falcons  in  the  outer  entrance  hall,  that 
has  survived  all  changes!  The  house  has  grown; 
wings  have  been  added;  the  floors  are  of  different 
levels;  you  lose  your  way;  you  peer  from  the  win- 
70 


Stephen  Crane  71 

dow  embrasures  to  learn  where  you  are,  and  seeing 
the  thickness  of  the  wall  you  wonder  at  the  men  of 
old  time  who  built  so  perdurably. 
In  recent  years  Brede  Place  has  been  put  in  order; 
today  you  may  see  tennis  played  on  the  lawns,  and 
hear  Debussy  in  the  parlours.  But  when  Stephen 
Crane  rented  it  all  was  delightfully  muddled  and 
mediaeval.  Why  he  took  Brede  Place  I  know  not. 
He  liked  adventures  and  new  experiences,  and 
Brede  Place,  Sussex,  was  a  change  from  Mulberry 
Street,  Newark,  New  Jersey. 
He  found  himself  in  a  far-flung  colony  of  writers. 
Crane  was  a  fine  horseman,  and  within  riding, 
cycling  or  driving  distance  (motors  were  uncommon 
then)  lived  Henry  James,  H.  G.  Wells,  Joseph 
Conrad,  Ford  Madox  Hueffer,  and  others.  They 
were  proud  to  have  the  author  of  "The  Red  badge 
of  Courage"  among  them,  and  he  had  lately  achieved 
another  brilliant  success  with  "The  Open  Boat." 
That  year  I  was  spending  my  summer  holiday  at 
Winchelsea,  and  as  I  had  been  writing  in  The 
dcademy,  with  admiration,  of  this  young  American 
who  had  captured  literary  England,  it  was  natural 
that  I  should  wish  to  see  him.  So  one  day  in  full 
summer,  when  the  hops  were  head  high,  and  all  the 
country  decked  with  bloom  and  greenery,  I  cycled 
over  to  Brede  Place. 

Stephen  Crane  was  seated  before  a  long,  deal  table 
facing  the  glorious  view.  He  had  been  writing 
hard;  the  table  was  littered  with  papers,  and  he 
read  aloud  to  me  in  his  precise,  remote  voice  what 
he  had  composed  that  afternoon.  One  passage  has 


72  Authors  and  I 

remained  with  me — about  a  sailor  in  a  cabin,  and 
above  his  head  swung  a  vast  huddle  of  bananas. 
He  seemed  over-anxious  about  the  right  description 
'of  that  huddle  of  bananas;  and  it  seemed  strange 
to  find  this  fair,  slight,  sensitive  youth  sitting  in  the 
quiet  of  Brede  Place  writing  about  wild  deeds  in 
outlandish  places. 

Our  next  meeting  was  amazing.  I  received  an  in 
vitation  to  spend  three  days  in  Brede  Place ;  on  the 
second  day  a  play  was  to  be  performed  at  the  school 
room  in  Brede  Village  a  mile  away  up  the  hill.  This 
play  we  were  informed,  sub  rosa,  had  been  written 
by  Henry  James,  H.  G.  Wells,  A.  E.  W.  Mason 
and  other  lights  of  literature. 

Duly  I  arrived  at  Brede  Place.  Surely  there  has 
never  been  such  a  house  party.  The  ancient  house, 
in  spite  of  its  size,  was  taxed  to  the  uttermost.  There 
were  six  men  in  the  vast,  bare  chamber  where  I 
slept,  the  six  iron  bedsteads,  procured  for  the 
occasion,  quite  lost  in  the  amplitude  of  the  chamber. 
At  the  dance,  which  was  held  on  the  evening  of  our 
arrival,  I  was  presented  to  bevies  of  beautiful  Amer 
ican  girls  in  beauteous  frocks.  I  wondered  where 
they  came  from.  And  all  the  time,  yes,  as  far  as 
I  remember,  all  the  time  our  host,  the  author  of 
"The  Red  Badge  of  Courage,"  sat  in  a  corner  of  the 
great  fireplace  in  the  hall,  not  unamused,  but  very 
silent.  He  seemed  rather  bewildered  by  what  had 
happened  to  him. 

Of  the  play  I  have  no  recollection.  The  perform 
ance  has  been  driven  from  my  mind  by  the  memory 
of  the  agony  of  getting  to  Brede  village.  It  was  a 


Stephen  Crane  73 

pouring  wet  night,  with  thunder  and  lightning. 
The  omnibuses  which  transported  us  up  the  hill 
stuck  in  the  miry  roads.  Again  and  again  we  had 
to  alight  and  push,  and  each  time  we  returned 
to  our  seats  on  the  top  (the  American  girls  were 
inside)  I  remarked  to  my  neighbour,  H.  G.  Wells, 
that  Brede  village  is  not  a  suitable  place  for 
dramatic  performances. 

Many  people  reread  "The  Red  Badge  of  Courage" 
during  the  Great  War,  and  the  strange  thing  is 
that  this  work  of  imagination  seems  more  real  than 
the  actual  accounts  of  the  fighting  in  Flanders.  Yet 
this  is  not  strange.  The  imagination  is  able  to  give 
a  verisimilitude  to  invented  happenings  that  a  report, 
however  accurate,  does  not  achieve.  The  artist 
selects.  He  treats  only  that  which  is  necessary  to 
produce  his  effects.  Stephen  Crane  was  an  artist. 
He  imagined  what  he  himself,  an  inarticulate,  be 
wildered  unit  in  the  Civil  War,  would  think,  feel, 
and  do;  he  projected  his  imagination  into  the  con 
flict,  and  the  result  was  that  astonishing  work — 
"The  Red  Badge  of  Courage." 
The  Civil  War  stories  in  "The  Little  Regiment" 
volumes  are  as  good  as  "The  Red  Badge,"  but  the 
editor  or  publisher  who  asked  him  to  write  essays 
on  "The  Great  Battles  of  the  World"  did  not  know 
his  business.  They  are  routine  work.  His  imagina 
tion  was  not  moved,  as  it  was  in  "The  Red  Badge," 
and  in  "Maggie,"  the  first  book  he  wrote,  which 
was  published  when  he  was  21. 
It  was  natural  that  Crane  should  want  to  see  actual 
warfare,  and  editors  were  eager  to  employ  him.  So 


74  Authors  and  I 

he  saw  the  Gneco-Turkish  War,  and  the  Spanish- 
American  War,  but  nothing  vital  came  from  these 
experiences.  His  imagination  worked  better  in  a 
room  than  on  a  battlefield. 

Yet  one  thing  came  out  of  his  experiences  of  real 
warfare — one  sentence.  When  he  returned  he  said : 
"  The  Red  Badge'  is  all  right." 


13.     WILLIAM  HENRY  DAVIES 

1TAAVIES  is  a  real  poet,  an  authentic  poet,  a 
-L'  simple-minded  poet  in  the  noblest  sense.  As  a 
man  and  as  a  poet  he  is  the  most  innocent-minded  of 
living  writers.  He  sings  because  he  has  to  sing,  as  a 
bird  sings,  without  premeditation,  unaware  that 
people  are  listening,  and  indifferent  if  they  are.  He 
has  had  a  remarkable  life,  very  remarkable,  but 
before  discussing  it  I  should  like  to  copy  out  a  piece 
by  him  called  "Sheep." 

SHEEP 

When  I  was  once  in  Baltimore, 
A  man  came  up  to  me  and  cried, 
"Come,  I  have  eighteen  hundred  sheep, 
And  we  will  sail  on  Tuesday's  tide. 

"If  you  will  sail  with  me,  young  man, 
Til  pay  you  fifty  shillings  down; 
These  eighteen  hundred  sheep  I  take 
From  Baltimore  to  Glasgow  town." 

He  paid  me  fifty  shillings  down, 
I  sailed  with  eighteen  hundred  sheep; 
We  soon  had  cleared  the  harbour's  mouth, 
We  soon  were  in  the  salt  sea  deep. 

The  first  night  we  were  out  at  sea 

Those  sheep  were  quiet  in  their  mind; 
The  second  night  they  cried  with  fear — 
They  smelt  no  pastures  in  the  wind. 

75 


•76  Authors  and  I 

They  sniffed,  poor  things,  for  their  green  fields, 
They  cried  so  loud  I  could  not  sleep: 
For  fifty  thousand  shillings  down 
I  would  not  sail  again  with  sheep. 

This   poem    is   not   a    fancy.      It  happened.     The 
poet  heard   the  sheep  crying  on  one  of  the  many 
voyages  he  took  when  he  was  a  cattleman  helping 
to  convey  cargoes  of  cattle  and  sheep  from  America 
to  England.     It  is  all  set  down  in  that  remarkable 
book  by  William  Henry  Davies,  called  "The  Au 
tobiography  of  a  Super-Tramp,"  wherein  the  Odys 
sey  of  his  vagrancy  in  America  and  Canada,  extend 
ing  over  many  years,  is  told  with  the  artlessness  and 
simplicity  that  mark  his  poems.    A  Welshman,  born 
in  Monmouthshire,  this  natural  truant,  this  wan 
derer  without  luggage,  this  pedlar,  hawker,  poet- 
tramp,  stands  out  as  an  Original.  Social  conventions, 
the  nice  proprieties  of  civilised  life,  were  no  more  to 
him  than  they  are  to  a  dog  or  a  bird.     He  touched 
life  through  'his  passion  for  reading  and  roaming- 
that  was  all.    Always  he  looked  forward  to  the  life 
of  a  student,  but  he  delayed.    Throughout  his  wan 
derings   there   were   long   periods   when    he   never 
opened  a  book,  when  he  was  content  just  to  drift 
from  county  to  county,   from  state  to  state,   and 
watch  the  world. 

While  still  a  youth  his  grandmother  left  him  an 
annuity  of  ten  shillings  (about  two  and  a  half  dol 
lars)  a  week,  which  sum,  to  the  unambitious  serenity 
of  his  mind,  seemed  a  competence,  relieving  him 
from  the  trouble  of  earning  a  living.  He  did  not 
always  draw  the  annuity;  sometimes  he  would  al- 


William  Henry  Davies  77 

low  it  to  accumulate,  so  again  and  again  when  he 
returned  to  England  from  America  he  would  find 
himself  a  capitalist. 

He   reduced   life   to   its  simplest  elements.     Such 
bogies  as — the  police,  doss  houses,  jails,  poorhouses, 
the  companionship  of  thieves  and  wasters  did  not  dis 
turb    him.      Airily    and    companionably   he   mixed 
with  them,  but  they  did  not  change  or  affect  Davies. 
He  went  to  America  because  it  was  far  away,  large 
and  potential ;  he  stayed  there  several  years,  tramp 
ing  and  travelling  long  distances  without  a  ticket, 
"working  here  and  there  as  the  inclination  seized 
me,  which,  I  must  confess  was  not  often."  Then  he 
set  out  for  the  Klondyke,  thinking  that  there  "the 
rocks  were  of  solid  gold,"  but  meeting  with  disaster 
(he  lost  a  foot  in  a  railway  accident)  he  returned 
to  London  and  lived  in  Rowton  House,  a  doss  house 
in  Newington  Butts,  where  the  charge  is  sixpence 
a  night.    At  the  end  of  two  years  he  left  Rowton 
House  for  less  expensive  quarters  at  The   Farm 
House,   Kennington,   as  he  had   handed  over  two 
of  his  ten  shillings  a  week  to  a  needy  relative. 
At  this  point  Mr.  George  Bernard  Shaw  enters  as 
the  Good  Fairy  of  the  Davies  history.     In  the  year 
1905  he  received  by  post  a  volume  of  poems  from 
a  stranger.     It  was  marked  "Price  half  a  crown" 
(60  cents),  and  was  accompanied  by  a  curt,  civil 
letter,  asking  Mr.  Shaw  either  to  send  half  a  crown 
or  return  the  book.  Mr.  Shaw  read  the  book,  deter 
mined  that  Mr.  Davies  was  "a  real  poet,"  "a  gen 
uine  innocent  writing  odds  and  ends  of  verse  about 
odds  and  ends  of  things,"  showing  no  sign  that  he 


7 8  Authors  and  I 

had  ever  read  anything,  "otherwise  than  as  a 
child  reads."  Mr.  Shaw  bought  several  copies 
of  the  poems  and  sent  them  to  literary  friends. 
Then  the  reviews  began,  interviews  followed,  and 
this  tramp,  this  pedlar,  this  griddler,  this  hobo, 
this  cattleman,  this  poet,  this  child  of  innocence, 
awoke  one  morning  in  his  doss  house  (he  always 
tried  for  the  bed  next  to  wall,  so  that  he  would 
not  have  a  sleeping  tramp  on  each  side)  to  find 
himself  famous.  He  became  a  Man  of  Letters 
(the  eight  shilling  a  week  still  kept  him,  including 
postage  and  paper,  and  he  wrote  his  Life — "The  Au 
tobiography  of  a  Super-Tramp,"  to  which  George 
Bernard  Shaw  contributed  a  characteristic  preface, 
telling,  with  amazement,  the  story  of  finding  Davies 
through  the  post. 

There  is  little  about  literature  in  the  autobiography. 
Throughout  the  pages  Davies  is  content  just  to  live 
with  the  idea,  perhaps  lurking  in  his  mind,  of  one 
day  writing  out  the  poems  he  was  forever  making. 
Not  till  his  wandering  years  were  over  did  he 
seriously  "commence  author."  One  day  in  Rowton 
House  he  sat  down  to  write  a  tragedy  in  blank 
verse  called  "The  Robber";  this  was  followed  by 
a  long  poem  wherein  dumb  nature  meets  to  impeach 
man  for  his  cruelty;  then  he  wrote  other  things, 
including  hundreds  of  short  poems.  No  publisher 
would  take  them.  He  remained  in  obscurity,  dis 
couraged  and  unknown,  adding  to  his  income  by 
hawking  and  peddling,  until  one  day  he  had  the 
happy  idea  of  drawing  a  sum  in  advance  on  his  an 
nuity,  printing  his  poems  at  his  own  cost,  and  offer- 


William  Henry  Davies  79 

ing  the  book,  through  the  post,  to  eminent  littera 
teurs,  on  sale  or  return. 

Now  he  is  arrived.  He  is  a  successful  poet;  he 
lives  in  the  eminent  respectability  of  Bloomsbury, 
and  there,  as  it  is  a  neighbourly  section  of  the  world, 
I  may  hope  one  day  to  meet  him.  There,  too,  an 
other  poet-tramp,  an  American,  Nicholas  Vachel 
Lindsay,  will,  I  trust,  present  himself  some  day 
during  his  prolonged  sojourn  in  London.  I  have 
just  reread  Lindsay's  delightful  tramp  book,  "Ad 
ventures  While  Preaching  the  Gospel  of  Beauty." 
It  is  so  different  from  the  book  by  Davies. 
Lindsay  is  self-conscious;  he  has  a  mission;  his  book 
is  the  work  of  a  literary  man,  exuberant,  gay,  who 
sets  out  with  the  intention  of  writing  a  book  about 
his  tramp  from  Springfield,  Illinois,  to  Kansas  and 
back.  Davies  had  no  thought  of  writing  a  book. 
His  "Super-Tramp"  is  written  in  the  way  that  an 
unmoral,  adventurous  child  might  tell  his  mother 
how  he  spent  a  holiday.  So  his  poems  were  written 
—just  to  tell  himself  simple  and  beautiful  things 
about  the  world,  about  unhistoric,  homely  men, 
women  and  children,  their  sojourning,  their  strug 
gles,  their  sorrow  and  their  joy — 

The  strangest  moment  of  my  life 
Is  when  I  think  about  the  poor; 
When,  like  a  spring  that  rain  has  fed, 
My  pity  rises  more  and  more. 

The  flower  that  loves  the  warmth  and  light, 
Has  all  its  mornings  bathed  in  dew, 
My  heart  has  moments  wet  with  tears, 
My  weakness  is  they  are  to  few. 


14.     RICHARD  HARDING  DAVIS 

I   MET  him  once.  It  was  a  strange  encounter.  He 
spoke  but  five  words.  They  were  self-revealing. 
From  the  way  he  spoke  those  five  words  I  knew 
approximately  the  kind  of  man  that  Richard  Hard 
ing  Davis  was. 

The  time  was  the  month  of  January,  1900.  Great 
Britain's  trouble  was  then  the  Boer  War,  and  the 
centre  of  the  trouble  was  the  siege  of  Ladysmith. 
Hemmed  within  the  Natal  village  was  General 
White  with  10,000  troops  and  several  war  cor 
respondents  including  young  George  W.  Steevens  of 
the  Daily  Mail,  the  best  war  correspondent  of 
the  day,  perhaps  the  best  in  the  annals.  One  Satur 
day  morning  of  that  bleak  January  the  heliograph 
flashed  the  news  from  Ladysmith,  and  the  cable 
flashed  it  to  London,  that  George  W.  Steevens  had 
passed  away.  He  was  my  dear  friend,  so  I  took 
a  train  for  Merton  Abbey,  Surrey,  where  in  peace 
time  I  had  spent  happy  days  with  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Steevens. 

Mrs.  W.  K.  Clifford  was  with  Mrs.  Steevens.  We 
did  our  best,  and  were  beginning  to  calm  and  com 
fort  her  when  Alfred  Harmsworth  was  announced, 
plain  Alfred  Harmsworth,  then,  untitled,  founder 
and  proprietor  of  the  Daily  Mail.  He  was  very 
fond  of  George,  and  he  was  deeply  distressed  at 
80 


Richard  Harding  Davis  8  I 

what  had  happened,  so  distressed  that  I  found  the 
scene  too  painful  to  witness.  I  could  do  nothing. 
I  was  in  the  way,  so  I  pushed  open  the  French 
window  and  wandered  into  the  garden.  There  was 
a  long  pond  or  lake  in  the  grounds  (Merton  Abbey, 
associated  with  Nelson  and  Lady  Hamilton,  is  now 
pulled  down)  and  at  the  head  of  the  water  was 
an  heroic  statue.  Posed  in  front  of  the  statue 
I  observed  a  handsome  man  standing  in  a  hand 
some  attitude. 

Being  a  habitue  of  the  house,  and  knowing  that 
Mrs.  Steevens  was  particular  about  preserving  the 
privacy  of  the  historic  grounds,  I  suppose  that  my 
eyebrows  lifted  ever  so  little,  as  if  to  say:  "Pray, 
sir,  what  are  you  doing  here?" 
His  voice  rang  out:  "I  am  Richard  Harding 
Davis." 

The  fine  words  admitted  of  no  argument,  no  dis 
cussion.  It  was  final.  He  meant  it  to  be  so.  If 
I  did  not  know  who  Richard  Harding  Davis  was 
that  was  my  fault,  my  loss.  He  was  Richard  Hard 
ing  Davis,  and  the  world,  including  myself,  must 
know  it. 

I  raised  my  hat  and  prepared  to  retire.  There  was 
nothing  else  to  do.  He  raised  his  hat;  we  bowed 
again,  both  enjoying  the  exchange  of  courtesies. 
The  only  mistake  I  made  was  in  not  handing  him 
my  card.  He  would  have  appreciated  that  useless 
but  proper  addition  to  the  ceremony.  Later  I 
learned  that  Mr.  Alfred  Harmsworth  had  invited 
Richard  Harding  Davis  to  accompany  him  in  his 
motor  car  on  the  visit  to  Mrs.  Steevens,  so  that 


82  -Authors  and  I 

he  might  give  him  instructions  at  leisure.  Mr.  Al 
fred  Harmsworth  never  wasted  time.  He  had  djc- 
cided  to  ask  Richard  Harding  Davis  to  take 
George's  place  as  correspondent  of  the  Dally  Mail 
in  South  Africa.  The  rest  is  history.  Davis  saw  the 
relief  of  Ladysmith,  and  presently  joined  the  enemy 
"to  watch,"  as  he  laconically  expressed  it,  "the  Boers 
fighting  the  same  men  I  had  just  seen  fighting 
them." 

Richard  Harding  Davis  was  not  a  stylist,  and  he 
had  little  love  or  reverence  for  the  tongue  that 
Shakespeare  spoke  and  Milton  ennobled.  He  Jast 
used  it  as  a  vehicle  for  the  expression  of  the  interest 
that  he,  a  Man  of  Action,  took  in  life.  He  liked 
the  kind  of  people  and  things  that  Kipling  likes,  but 
when  a  headstrong  critic  called  him  the  American 
Kipling,  and  another  said  that  his  story  called  "Gal- 
legher"  is  "as  good  as  anything  in  Bret  Harte," 
these  gentlemen  wrote  nonsense.  Kipling,  like 
Davis,  graduated  from  newspapers,  but  Kipling 
is  a  genius  and  nothing  that  Davis  ever  wrote  ap 
proaches  within  sight  of  the  wonder  of  Bret  Harte's 
Californian  tales. 

But  Richard  Harding  Davis  was  a  very  remarkable 
man,  and  few  newspapers  have  ever  had  such  a  prize 
reporter  and  correspondent.  One  of  the  finest  and 
most  awesome  stories  written  during  the  Great  War 
was  his  account  of  the  entry  of  the  Germans  into 
Brussels;  and  one  of  the  best  pieces  of  descriptive 
writing  is  his  account  of  how  he  saved  himself  from 
being  arrested  by  the  Germans,  and  shot  as  a  spy, 
through  remembering,  at  the  critical  moment,  that 


Richard  Harding  Davis  83 

« 

he  was  wearing  a  hat  marked  with  the  name  of  a 
well-known  New  York  hatter,  thus  proving  his 
identity,  saving  his  life,  and  giving  him  a  typical 
Davis  newspaper  story. 

His  sense  of  the  dramatic  was  vivid;  he  saw  him 
self  as  a  person  in  the  drama;  and  when  he  met 
something  interesting  and  dramatic  he  could  make 
a  vivid  story  out  of  it,  understandable  of  all  men, 
without  circumlocution,  and  without  art. 
He  was  an  ideal  magazine  writer,  and  he  had  the 
sense  of  personal  honour,  of  doing  one's  job,  of  play 
ing  the  game,  of  seeing  a  trouble  through  and  emerg 
ing  victorious,  that  made  him  popular  with  every 
kind  of  reader.  How  well  I  remember  the  emo 
tion  and  joy  with  which  I  first  read  his  story  called 
"The  Bar  Sinister,"  telling  how  a  street  dog,  a 
mongrel,  proved  to  be  a  champion  with  a  perfect 
pedigree.  It  is  beautifully  told.  I  have  given  away 
copies  of  "The  Bar  Sinister"  merely  to  watch  the 
reader's  heightened  colour  and  air  of  gratification  as 
this  fine  story  unfolds.  And  "Gallegher,"  telling 
how  the  printer's  devil  made  good,  came  through, 
"beat  the  town,"  how  gay  and  full  of  gusto  it  is. 
"Gallegher"  was  enormously  popular.  Dickens 
would  have  liked  it.  Henry  James,  too.  Every 
condition  of  man  and  woman  likes  "Gallegher"  and 
"The  Bar  Sinister." 

He  was  as  well  known  in  London  tas  in  New  York. 
Indeed,  he  was  known  throughout  the  world,  and 
he  took  good  care  not  to  let  the  world  forget  him. 
No  war  was  complete  without  Richard  Harding 
Davis.  Correctly  dressed,  according  to  martial  cos- 


84  Authors  and  I 

tume  (he  was  no  blue-serge  suit  and  umbrella  war 
correspondent),  he  acted  as  war  correspondent  in  the 
Turkish-Greek,  Spanish-American,  South  African, 
Russian-Japanese  wars,  and  he  went  twice  to  the 
Great  War.  Cuba,  the  Congo,  Egypt,  Greece,  Cen 
tral  America — the  efficient  R.  H.  D.  was  every 
where,  and  always  in  the  limelight. 
His  greatest  limelight  effect  was  the  Jaggers  epi 
sode.  It  was  a  splendid  piece  of  bold  advertisement, 
mixed  with  the  fun  of  doing  it,  so  swift  and  suc 
cessful  that  the  advertisement  was  condoned.  He 
asserted  that  he  did  not  mean  the  public  to  know  of 
the  Jaggers  journey  which  carried  the  name  of 
Richard  Harding  Davis  to  the  ends  of  the  earth. 
I  am  sure  that  he  would  have  been  annoyed  if  it  had 
not  become  known.  At  that  time  the  District  Mes 
senger  Service  was  a  new  toy  in  London.  If  you 
wished  to  send  a  quick  letter  from  Kensington  to 
Kew,  the  post  being  too  slow,  all  you  had  to  do  was 
to  call  up  a  District  Boy  Messenger,  pay  him  and 
dispatch  him  on  his  errand.  Jaggers,  aged  14,  had 
been  employed  by  Mr.  Davis.  He  was  a  boy  of  the 
type  of  Gallegher,  surprised  at  nothing,  ready  for 
anything.  One  day  Richard  Harding  Davis,  after 
debating  with  some  friends  at  the  Savoy  Hotel 
whether  anything  would  startle  or  deter  Jaggers 
from  doing  anything  in  the  way  of  business,  he 
casually  gave  Jaggers  a  letter  addressed  to  a'lady  in 
Chicago.  Jaggers  went,  delivered  the  letter  and 
beat  the  post.  Some  months  later  Richard  Harding 
Davis  married  the  lady. 
His  interests  were  in  the  present,  in  people  who  are 


Richard  Harding  Davis  85 

doing  adventurous,  odd  and  amusing  things.  From 
the  abundance  his  quick  brain  and  moving  eye 
selected  the  best  magazine  features,  and  he  turned 
them  into  copy  with  confidence  and  brilliance,  quite 
aware  that  Richard  Harding  Davis  was  doing  it, 
and  that  in  his  opinion,  what  he  did  was  the  best 
of  its  kind. 

On  February  29,  1916,  dire  days  for  the  Allies,  he 
wrote  to  his  brother — 

The  attack  on  Verdun  makes  me  sick.  I  was  there  six 
weeks  ago  in  one  of  the  forts,  but  of  course  could  not 
ihen  nor  can  I  now  write  of  it.  I  don't  believe  the  drive 
can  get  through  for  two  reasons,  and  the  unmilitary  one 
is  that  I  believe  in  a  just  God. 

A  brave  man,  a  chivalrous  man,  an  honest  man, 
who  never  doubted  how  the  Great  War  would  end. 
He  did  not  see  the  promised  end,  but  he  helped  it 
on,  "doing  the  best  and  finest  work  of  his  career 
in  the  cause  of  the  Allies  .  .  .  fretful  for  the  morn 
ing  that  he  might  again  take  up  the  fight."  So 
writes  his  brother,  who  has  written  his  Life. 


IS.    JOHN  DRINKWATER 

I  AM  an  old  playgoer,  but  I  cannot  recall,  in 
all  the  plays  I  have  seen,  a  moment  so  tense 
with  spiritual  significance  as  the  fall  of  the  curtain 
at  the  close  of  the  first  scene  on  Lincoln  kneeling 
in  prayer  against  the  parlour  table.  It  is  so  simple, 
so  perfectly  simple,  and  inevitable.  The  pageant- 
play  called  "The  Wayfarer,"  which,  at  great  cost 
and  with  amazing  scenic  effects,  sets  out  diligently 
to  seek  such  moments,  fails  to  find  one.  It  needed 
a  poet  like  Drinkwater  to  pierce  through  externals 
to  reality,  and  it  needed  an  actor  like  Frank  Mc- 
Glynn  to  be  in  the  character,  not  outside,  act 
ing  it. 

There  must  be  many  dramatic  authors  who,  in  face 
of  the  success  of  "Abraham  Lincoln:  a  Play,"  are 
saying  to  themselves,  "Why  did  I  not  think  of  this 
as  a  subject,  why  did  not  I  write  a  play  on  Abraham 
Lincoln,  why  should  an  Englishman  do  it?  These 
be  mysteries.  Yet  are  they?  Did  not  an  English 
man,  Lord  Bryce,  write  "The  American  Common 
wealth,"  which  eminent  Americans  have  called  "the 
best  treatise  on  American  government?"  Is  it  not 
because  distance  and  aloofness  from  a  subject  give 
clearness  and  simplicity  of  vision?  The  man  on  a 
hilltop  looking  down  upon  a  wood  can  write  a 
better  account  of  it  than  the  man  who  is  plodding 
86 


John  Drinkwater  87 

through  the  undergrowth.  The  walker  sees  the 
trees;  the  man  on  the  hill  sees  the  shape  of  the 
wood,  and  its  bearing  on  the  country.  Some  Amer 
icans  who  saw  the  play  in  London  were  angry 
because  the  local  colour  was  sometimes  wrong,  be 
cause  there  were  anachronisms,  because  the  "hired 
girl"  was  called  a  servant-maid,  because  General 
Grant  was  made  to  say,  "My  word!"  instead  of 
"By  gad,  sir,"  and  so  on.  As  if  such  ephemera 
matter.  The  shape  and  bearing  of  the  wood  is  not 
affected  because  two  or  three  of  the  trees  are  mis 
named.  I  am  reminded  of  the  British  colonel  who 
protested  that  he  would  never  read  another  word  of 
Kipling  "because,  By  gad,  sir,  the  fellow  is  all 
wrong  about  the  number  of  buttons  on  the  tunics 
of  the  Heavy  Dragoons." 

Why  was  John  Drinkwater,  an  English  poet,  not 
very  well  known,  able  to  do  it,  when  there  are  so 
many  able  dramatists  who  should  have  been  able 
to  write  a  play  around  Lincoln  ?  Is  it  because  he  is 
a  poet  and  an  idealist,  who  had  a  vision  of  Lincoln 
as  God's  man,  and  kept  that  vision  clear  and 
clean? 

In  part  that  answers  the  question,  but  it  is  not  the 
whole  answer.  Let  us  look  at  John  Drinkwatcr's 
past.  He  was  born  a  poet,  not  by  any  means  a 
great  poet,  but  one  whom  the  Muse  had  called, 
touched  lightly,  and  to  whom  she  had  also  given  the 
philosophic,  spiritual,  humanist  outlook,  say  of  Mat 
thew  Arnold  and  William  Watson.  That,  by 
itself,  is  not  a  very  marketable  equipment  for  life. 
Most  poets  of  this  kind  earn  a  living  in  a  govern- 


88  Authors  and  I 

ment  office,  the  Board  of  Trade,  or  the  British 
Museum,  and  compose  poems  in  the  luncheon  hour, 
or  during  week-ends,  adding  to  their  income  by 
writing  for  the  Spectator  and  The  Nineteenth  Cen 
tury. 

This  John  Drinkwater  did;  I  mean  he  wrote  for 
high-class  weeklies  and  magazines;  but  he  has  also 
moved  across  a  much  more  substantial  and  fertile 
background — the  Theatre.  He  may  be  said  to  have 
been  called  cradled  in  the  Theatre.  His  father  was 
manager  to  Granville  Barker;  and  although  the 
early  years  of  his  life  were  spent  clerking  in  Assur 
ance  companies  (safety  first  is  the  way  of  fathers  all 
the  world  over),  he  eventually  stepped  into  his 
rightful  niche  as  Co-Founder  of  "The  Pilgrim 
Players,"  and  eventually  as  Producer,  etc.,  to  the 
Birmingham  Repertory  Theatre.  There  he  learnt 
practically  and  strenuously  the  business  of  writing, 
producing,  and  acting  in  plays.  The  poet  in  him 
had  to  face  facts.  Lucky  poet! 
One  day  he  read  Lord  Charnwood's  monograph  on 
"Lincoln."  He  took  fire,  and  wrote  "Abraham 
Lincoln:  a  Play."  He  was  ripe  for  it.  The  poet 
in  him  dreamed  the  dream  of  Lincoln,  the  play 
wright  and  the  actor  in  him  curbed  and  directed 
the  poet.  It  was  all  so  natural ;  the  circumstances 
synchronised;  and  the  world,  tired  of  self-seekers,  of 
politicians  masquerading  as  statesmen,  of  man-made 
dogmas  masquerading  as  Faith,  hungering  for  just 
such  a  play,  found  it  in  "Abraham  Lincoln." 
He  is  a  quiet  poet.  I  can  see  why  he  could  write 
the  simple,  unadorned  dialogue  of  "Abraham  Lin- 


John  Drinkwater  89 

coin,"  a  style  that  looks  so  easy,  but  is  so  hard.  He 
is  a  contemplative  poet  who  walks  serene  pastures; 
who  makes  poems  on  places  and  on  cloistral 
thoughts.  How  do  you  like  this,  called  "Reci 
procity"? 

I  do  not  think  that  skies  and  meadows  arc 
Moral,  or  that  the  fixture  of  a  star 
Comes  of  a  quiet  spirit,  or  that  trees 
Have  wisdom  in  their  windless  silences. 
Yet  these  are  things  invested  in  my  mood 
With  constancy,  and  peace,  and  fortitude, 
That  in  my  troubled  season  I  can  cry 
Upon  the  wide  composure  of  the  sky, 
And  envy  fields,  and  wish  that  I  might  be 
As  little  daunted  as  a  star  or  tree. 

Oh  yes,  a  calm  poet,  a  studious  poet,  who  entirely 
forgets  when  he  is  writing  poetry  that  there  arc 
such  poeple  as  actors,  and  such  places  as  Broadway 
and  Leicester  Square.  Here  are  four  lines  from 
"The  Last  Confessional": 

For  all  the  beauty  that  escaped 
This  foolish  brain,  unsung,  unshaped, 
For  wonder  that  was  slow  to  move, 
Forgive  me,  Death,  forgive  me,  Love. 

And  here  is  a  fragment  from  a  longer  poem  called 
"To  One  I  Love": 

I  am  thirty-six  years  old, 

And  folks  are  kindly  to  me, 

And  there  are  no  ghosts  that  should  have  reason  to  haunt 

me, 
And  I  have  tempted  no  magical  happenings 


90  Authors  and  I 

By  forsaking  the  clear  noons  of  thought 
For  the  wizardries  that  the  credulous  take 
To  be  golden  roads  to  revelation. 

Would  you  have  thought  that  this  kind  of  poet — 
reflective,  gentle,  companionable,  trim — could  write 
one  of  the  most  successful  plays  of  the  day,  and 
himself,  at  one  time  or  another,  act  all,  or  nearly 
all,  the  chief  characters  in  the  play? 


16.     LORD  DUNSANY 

T  ORD  DUNSANY,  eighteenth  Baron,  created 
-L'  1439,  late  captain  in  the  Royal  Inniskilling 
Fusiliers,  with  seats  at  Dunsany  Castle,  County 
Meath,  Ireland,  and  at  Dunstall  Priory,  Kent,  likes 
America. 

And  America  likes  him.  The  ovation  he  received, 
at  his  first  lecture  on  "My  Own  Lands,"  was 
whole-hearted  and  excited.  He  might  have  been 
a  conquering  general,  not  a  mere  poet.  Once  only 
did  he  have  bad  moments. 

It  occurred  in  the  reception  room  at  the  close  of 
his  lecture.  This  tall,  athletic  poet — he  is  over  six 
feet  high — was  receiving  the  usual  gushing  congrat 
ulations  from  the  usual  bevy  of  women  who  delight 
to  felicitate  an  attractive  male  lecturer,  when  the 
chorus  of  flattery  was  suddenly  disturbed  by  two 
excited  Irishwomen,  who  pushed  themselves  to  the 
front  and  demanded  to  know  why  he  had  been  civil 
to  England,  and  why  he  had  not  mentioned  the 
distresses  of  the  distressful  country.  They  did  not 
frame  their  questions  quite  as  politely,  but  that  was 
what  the  questions  signified.  The  author  of  "A 
Book  of  Wonder"  and  "A  Dreamer's  Tales" 
drooped  with  astonishment,  drooped  like  an  un- 
watered  flower.  When  the  questions  were  repeated 
louder  and  more  violently  he  answered  wearily:  "I 
9i 


92  Authors  and  I 

am  a  poet,  not  a  politician."  With  some  difficulty 
the  excited  Irishwomen  were  persuaded  to  retire, 
and  his  admirers  were  restoring  the  poet's  equa 
nimity  when  another  Irishwoman  hurled  herself  into 
the  fray,  uttering  cries  of  indignation  at  the  absence 
of  any  reference  to  the  woes  of  Ireland  in  the  lec 
ture.  Again  the  distinguished  Irishman  said  sadly 
but  politely :  "I  am  a  poet,  not  a  politician."  Then 
an  Englishman  made  a  little  ferocious  speech  which 
was  applauded ;  the  Irishwoman,  amazed,  withdrew, 
and  presently  Lord  Dunsany  was  able  to  escape  from 
his  first  experiences  of  the  Irish  in  America. 
I  tell  this  story  because  of  the  aptness  of  his  reply: 
"I  am  a  poet,  not  a  politician."  That  is  the  way 
he  writes.  He  says  what  he  has  to  say  in  the 
simplest  language;  he  goes  straight  to  his  point  as 
all  do  who,  like  him,  have  founded  their  literary 
style  on  the  Bible.  An  inferior  mind  would  have 
attempted  to  explain,  to  compromise,  to  placate  the 
petty  politicians.  He  contented  himself  with  the 
direct  and  ample  statement:  "I  am  a  poet." 
Lord  Dunsany  likes  America  for  the  simple  and 
human  reason  that  his  plays  and  books  have  been 
received  with  more  favour  in  America  than  in  Eng 
land.  Lord  Dunsany  speaks  of  the  "black  neglect" 
which  has  been  his  portion  in  England.  To  me  this 
statement  is  an  exaggeration.  "The  Gods  of  the 
Mountain"  and  "The  Golden  Doom"  were  beauti 
fully  staged  at  the  Haymarket  Theatre,  London, 
when  that  playhouse  was  under  the  direction  of  a 
fellow  poet — Herbert  Trench.  "King  Argimenes" 
and  "The  Glittering  Gate"  were  produced  by  the 


Lord  Dunsany  93 

Irish  Players,  and  "The  Lost  Silk  Hat"  was  given 
at  Manchester.  These  performances  may  seem  un 
important  compared  with  all  that  Mr.  Stuart 
Walker  has  done  for  the  Dunsany  plays  at  his  Port 
manteau  Theatre;  but  they  hardly  merit  the  re 
proach  of  "black  neglect."  Moreover,  the  few  and 
fit  in  London  hailed  his  first  book,  "The  Gods  of 
Pegana,"  published  in  1905,  with  acclamation — a 
new  voice,  a  new  vision.  It  may  not  have  sold  in 
thousands,  but  Lord  Dunsany  can  hardly  have  ex 
pected  "The  Gods  of  Pegana" — which  begins, 
"Before  there  stood  gods  upon  Olympus,  or  even 
Allah  was  Allah,  had  wrought  and  rested  Mana- 
Yood-Sushai"— to  have  the  sale  of  "Dere  Mable." 
And  I  remember  reading  "A  Dreamer's  Tales" 
week  by  week  in  the  Saturday  Revieu'.  Some 
authors  would  call  that  delirious  success. 
I  also  remember  a  great  gathering  in  London  of  the 
Poets  Club,  when  Lord  Dunsany  was  the  guest  of 
honour;  when  he  received  an  ovation;  when  he 
made  a  speech  that  may  be  described  as  poetry  and 
sense.  That  was  before  the  war,  in  which  he 
fought  gallantly,  and  those  who  heard  his  first 
lecture  in  New  York  were  glad  to  realise  that  the 
•tress  of  war  had  stressed  the  poet  in  him  even  to 
finer  issues.  Often  on  his  lips  were  the  words  in 
spiration  and  infinite:  with  waving  arms  he  wrought 
out  from  himself  the  statement:  "Anybody  can 
give  low  ideals,  that's  why  I  give  high  ones";  and 
there  was  dejection  in  his  cry:  "I  began  late  at 
23 — oh,  late !  Think  what  Keats  had  done  then." 
The  word  poet  is  ever  in  his  utterance.  To  him  it  is 


94  Authors  and  I 

the  proudest  title  in  the  desire  of  man.  But  the 
pedantic  reader  must  not  expect  to  find  the  poems 
of  Lord  Dunsany  in  a  book  shop.  If  he  has  written 
poems  he  has  not  published  them.  Yet  he  is  a  poet 
because  poetry  is  the  heart,  and  warp  and  woof  of 
all  his  work.  It  informs  the  whole  structure  as 
colour  does  a  flower. 

He  has  created  a  new  mythology  entirely  his  own, 
and  he  calls  the  places  where  his  gods,  kings,  queens, 
and  camel  drivers  dwell  the  Edge  of  the  World  or 
the  Lands  of  Wonder.  The  period  is  Uncertain, 
or  about  the  time  of  the  decadence  in  Babylon,  or 
the  Sixth  Dynasty,  or  today,  or  a  long  time  ago, 
or  any  time.  But  his  people  all  speak  plain,  simple, 
and  beautiful  English ;  his  fancies  are  always 
founded  on  facts,  and  within  each  play  and  tale  is 
an  esoteric  meaning,  which  often  does  not  fully 
express  itself  until  the  very  end — and  then  wonder, 
delight,  and  something  to  roll  the  mind  on. 
His  tales  and  plays  are  tales  and  plays  of  wonder 
and  faith.  Seek  and  ye  shall  find. 
"I  am  a  poet,  not  a  politician." 
It  is  poetry  and  faith,  not  politics  and  friction,  that 
will  help  to  rebuild  a  broken  world. 


17.    JOHN  GALSWORTHY 

TI7HEN  I  close  my  eyes  and  recall  John  Gals- 
^  »  worthy  I  see  his — smile. 
It  is  not  an  impulsive  smile,  not  the  smile  that 
ripples  over  a  face  unbidden :  it  is  the  smile  of  one 
who  seems  to  have  set  himself  to  smile,  and  would 
perhaps  rather  cry.  For  the  world  weighs  heavily 
upon  him — its  problems,  its  injustice,  the  veil  it 
puts  before  the  face,  thus  hiding  the  Beauty  that  is 
lurking,  waiting,  eager  to  be  seen  and  enjoyed. 
This  sad  knowledge  must  be  kept  private,  except  in 
books,  plays  and  essays.  So  in  public  he — smiles. 
I  wonder  if  that  smile  means  that  he  is  aware  that 
within  him  are  two  dark  voices  forever  calling,  one 
of  abysmal  cynicism,  the  other  of  soaring  sentiment. 
Is  the  smile  like  the  thick  coat  of  paint  with  which 
a  battleship  hides  its  wounds? 
In  his  latest  books  sentiment  and  cynicism  mingle. 
"Tatterdemalion"  is  compact  of  the  twain.  They 
are  mingled  in  the  sad,  short  story  called  "Defeat," 
which  he  has  converted  into  a  play.  The  Times 
began  its  notice  with  "Beneath  the  surface  we  can 
see  Mr.  Galsworthy's  obstinate  faith  and  his  passion 
for  beauty."  In  the  review  of  the  book,  published 
in  the  Times,  a  month  before  the  play  was  pro 
duced,  I  find  this  passage — "Mr.  Galsworthy  is  not 
afraid  to  be  pitiful,  to  be  a  worshipper  of  beauty, 
95 


96  Authors  and  I 

etc."  You  perceive  what  has  happened  ?  He  is  not 
now  reviewed  as  a  teller  of  tales,  as  a  maker  of 
drama,  as  an  artist ;  he  is  reviewed  as  a  man  with  a 
heart  and  a  conscience.  Can  it  be  that  the  smile 
does  not  deceive  anybody,  that  Mr.  Galsworthy  is 
now  accepted  as  a  propagandist  of  the  right  kind, 
the  very  right  kind,  but  a  propagandist?  Can  it  be 
that  he  is  now  more  interested  in  ideals  than  in 
characters,  in  exposing  abuses,  and  all  other  kinds  of 
foolishness  than  in  artistry?  Has  the  preacher  over 
come  the  artist?  Yet  still  he  smiles. 
I  have  just  read  "Tatterdemalion"  and  "A  Sheaf," 
and  I  can  only  say  that  had  these  two  books  been 
sent  to  me  for  review,  and  had  the  name  of  John 
Galsworthy  been  suppressed,  I  would  have  given 
them  a  few  lines  of  pleasant  and  perfunctory  praise, 
with  a  compliment  to  the  author  for  his  good  inten 
tions  and  graceful,  rather  oversensitized  style.  But 
John  Galsworthy  also  is  the  author  of  "Justice." 
There,  that  is  my  complaint,  merely  that  the  man 
who  wrote  such  plays  as  "Justice,"  "The  Silver 
Box,"  "The  Fugitive"  should  be  publishing  such 
excellent  but  unimportant  books  as  "A  Sheaf/' 
"Tatterdemalion,"  and  "A  Motley." 
Well  do  I  remember  the  afternoon  I  first  saw 
"Justice,"  at  the  Duke  of  York's  Theatre,  London, 
in  February,  1910.  It  was  painful  but  enthralling. 
The  play  marches  with  the  inevitableness  of  a 
Greek  tragedy,  but  in  "Justice"  we  are  also  given 
the  modern  view,  and  humanity  and  humour.  I 
shall  never  forget  that  Third  Scene  of  Act  III — all 
stage  directions,  no  dialogue — a  triumph  of  dramatic 


John  Galsworthy  97 

art.  I  left  the  theatre  scalded  with  apprehension 
lest  such  prison  experiences  be  true.  Others  felt  as 
I  did — statesmen  and  legal  luminaries,  for  I  am  told 
that  this  play  changed  the  law,  or  at  any  rate 
humanised  punishment.  "Justice"  reads  as  well, 
perhaps  better,  than  it  acts.  I  went  through  it  last 
night  at  a  sitting,  and  was  again  profoundly  moved. 
Equally  vital  is  the  impression  made  upon  the 
reader  by  another  of  the  Galsworthy  plays — "The 
Fugitive."  Here,  too,  the  drama  is  unfolded  with 
an  art  and  an  integrity  that  grips  and  saddens  to 
the  point  of  tears.  I  console  myself  with  the  reflec 
tion  that  Clare,  had  she  been  anybody  else  but 
Clare,  might  a  dozen  times  have  evaded  her  fate; 
but  the  dramatist  had  too  sure  a  grip  of  his  charac 
ter.  The  cynic  holds  the  man  of  sentiment  well  in 
hand,  and  Clare  is  pursued  to  the  end  by,  what  shall 
I  say,  by  her  better  self?  You  see  I  do  not 
complain  of  such  books  as  "A  Sheaf"  and  "Tatter 
demalion."  I  only  say  that  being  by  the  author  of 
"Justice"  and  "The  Fugitive"  they  seem  slight 
things.  In  "The  Pigeon,"  which  might  be  called 
"Charity,"  there  are  signs  of  weakening.  The  thesis 
is  clear,  but  the  working  out  is  loose.  It  is  not 
convincing,  not  inevitable.  Did  the  smile  begin 
then? 

This  weakening,  this  desire  to  teach,  not  to  relate, 
this  gradual  descent  to  the  propagandist,  applies  also 
to  his  novels.  What  could  be  better  than  "The 
Man  of  Property,"  published  in  1906,  that  urbane 
criticism  and  implied  appreciation  of  the  old  social 
order — the  Haves — in  old  England,  now  disappear- 


98  Authors  and  I 

ing  through  the  assaults  of  the  taxgatherer,  and  the 
solidarity  of  the  Have  Nots.  "The  Country  House" 
was  excellent,  too,  but  "The  Patrician,"  and  "The 
Dark  Flower" — no! 

He  is  a  sensitive  and  rather  a  recluse,  that  is  a 
recluse  who  likes  to  seek  people  himself,  not  to  be 
sought.  I  doubt  if  he  enjoyed  his  American  tour 
of  lecturing  and  reading  from  his  works.  I  heard 
him  lecture  and  read  more  than  once,  and  had  I 
been  asked  to  introduce  him  to  an  audience  (once 
I  came  very  near  doing  so)  I  should  have  startled 
him  and  the  audience  by  comparing  him  to  Charles 
Dickens.  They  had  this  in  common — the  burning 
to  right  wrongs.  That  was  the  basic  motive  of 
Charles  Dickens,  that  is  the  basic  motive  of  John 
Galsworthy.  It  is  explicit  in  Dickens;  it  is 
implicit  in  every  play,  novel,  tale  and  sketch  by 
Galsworthy.  Each  is  at  his  best  when  the  artist 
overrides  the  propagandist. 

That  is  what  I  should  have  tried  to  convey  to  the 
audience  had  I  been  appointed  to  introduce  John 
Galsworthy.  Perhaps  it  is  as  well  that  I  did  not, 
because  I  should  also  have  been  tempted  to  explain 
his  smile. 


18.     EDMUND  GOSSE 

I  HAVE  sometimes  allowed  myself,  in  Hans 
Andersen  vein,  to  have  been  present  at  Edmund 
Gosse's  cradle  when  the  fairy  godparents  were  cir 
cling  about  the  promising  infant. 
The  Fairy  of  the  Future  asks  him  what  career  he 
will  choose.  The  sapient  infant,  with  a  baby 
twinkle  in  his  brooding  eyes,  replies:  "I  should 
like  to  be  a  distinguished  literary  man  with  much 
commendation  from  the  elect,  and  many  friends, 
including  troops  of  peers  of  the  realm." 
This  is  just  the  career  that  Edmund  Gosse  has  had, 
and  I  am  sure  he  has  enjoyed  it  immensely.  Numer 
ous  books,  always  of  a  high  average,  have  proceeded 
from  his  eloquent  and  agreeable  pen,  including  one 
great  work,  "Father  and  Son,"  which  in  1913,  six 
years  after  publication,  was  crowned  by  the  French 
Academy.  His  friends  have  been  legion,  and  he 
has  written  bright  essays  about  all  the  important 
ones. 

Of  course  Mr.  Gosse  knows  many  intellectual  com 
moners,  such  as  George  Moore,  Maurice  Hewlett, 
and  Andre  Gidc,  but  his  chief  friends  arc,  I  opine, 
people  of  title.  This  may  be  due  to  the  fact  that 
from  1904  to  1914  he  was  librarian  of  the  Home 
of  Lords.  His  fairy  godmother  was  very  oblig 
ing. 

99 


ioo  Authors  and  I 

And  as  if  all  this  was  not  enough,  the  foremost 
British  men  of  letters  in  September,  1918,  united 
to  honour  Mr.  Gosse.  He  was  the  recipient  of  a 
bust  of  himself,  executed  by  Sir  William  Goscombe 
John,  R.  A.,  and  an  address  signed  on  behalf  of 
the  most  eminent,  including  Mr.  Arthur  Balfour 
and  Lord  Crewe. 

"The  genial  companion  of  gayer  hours"  is  one  of 
the  sentences.  How  true  that  is,  for  Mr.  Gosse, 
who  is  witty  and  anecdotic  over  dining  tables,  as 
in  relaxation  hours  at  his  various  clubs,  is  one  of 
the  few  literary  men  who  can  be  human  when 
delivering  addresses  on  Eminent  Ones  at  the  Man 
sion  House  cr  at  meetings  of  the  British  Academy 
of  Letters.  Some  obtrusive  people  say  that  they 
enjoy  his  writings  and  occasional  speeches  because 
they  occasionally  betray  a  touch  of  malice.  That, 
of  course,  is  ungenerous.  The  Times,  in  its  review 
of  "Some  Diversions  of  a  Man  of  Letters,"  put  it 
more  kindly,  with  a  reference,  in  passing,  to  the 
fact  that  a  cat's  claws  owe  something  of  their  sharp 
ness  to  the  velvet  in  which  they  are  for  the  most 
part  encased.  The  explanation  really  is  that  Mr. 
Gosse 's  mentality  is  not  dull.  It  is  alert.  While 
gazing  admiringly  at  the  sun  through  his  large 
gold  spectacles  he  is  quite  aware  that  there  are 
spots  upon  the  luminary'.  He  sees  the  oddities  as 
well  as  the  effulgence,  and  he  is  as  much  interested 
in  the  oddities  as  in  the  effulgence.  So  we  find  acid 
asides  in  his  writings  on  Tennyson,  Ruskin,  Swin 
burne,  and  lesser  luminaries  such  as  "Orion"  Home, 
and  the  authors  of  "Festus"  and  "John  Inglesant" 


Edmund  Gosse  101 

that  have  a  way  of  remaining  in  the  mind  longer 
than  the  eloquent  passages.  Sometimes,  too,  his 
talent  for  friendship  and  admiration  leads  him  into 
statements  that  leave  the  ordinary  man  who  has 
few  friends,  and  fewer  admirations,  rather  breath 
less.  This,  for  example,  on  Andre  Gide:  "There  is 
no  other  writer  in  Europe,  at  the  present  moment, 
whose  development  is  watched  with  so  eager  an 
interest,  by  the  most  sensitive  and  intelligent  judges 
as  that  of  M.  Gide." 

Mr.  Edmund  Gosse's  passion  for  letters  is  as  con 
sistent  as  it  is  passionate,  and  he  is  as  eager  today 
as  when  he  first  knew  Tennyson,  Swinburne,  and 
Ibsen.  What  an  array  of  books  he  can  show,  includ 
ing  a  masterwork  in  autobiography,  "Father  and 
Son,"  and  a  masterwork  in  biography,  "The  Life 
and  Letters  of  Dr.  John  Donne."  He  has  also 
written  a  novel,  a  kind  of  novel,  "The  Secret  of 
Narcisse."  And  he  has  the  honour  of  having  been 
the  first  to  introduce  Ibsen  to  the  English  public 
in  an  article  in  the  Spectator  on  March  16,  1872. 
For  he  is  a  linguist,  and  it  was  as  a  linguist,  I 
imagine,  that  he  was  most  useful  at  the  Board  of 
Trade. 

Truly  he  has  been  a  hard  worker,  for  this  inde 
fatigable  man  of  letters,  whose  books  fill  shelves, 
has  never  depended  entirely  upon  literature  for  a 
livelihood.  He  has  always  had  pleasant  posts,  that 
with  the  passing  of  the  years  have,  I  suppose,  grown 
more  lucrative,  and  today  when,  like  Charles  Lamb, 
he  is  Retired  Leisure,  he  draws,  I  hope,  a  pension, 
perhaps  two.  It  must  be  wonderful,  in  the  after- 


IO2  Authors  and  I 

noon  of  life,  to  sit  in  one's  library,  many  of  the 
books  autograph  copies  from  friends,  and  to  allow 
the  eyes  to  roam  from  one's  own  bust  by  an  emi 
nent  Royal  Academician,  to  an  address  of  congrat 
ulation,  from  the  best  minds  in  England,  signed  by 
a  member  of  the  House  of  Peers. 
Outwardly  such  a  career  for  a  man  of  letters  looks 
very  satisf actor)",  indeed  splendid.  How  different 
from  the  lives  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe  and  Francis 
Thompson!  But,  perhaps  reviewing  it,  Mr.  Gosse 
may  detect  a  drop  of  bitterness.  He  has  never  been 
greatly  accepted  of  song.  Many  books  of  poetry 
stand  to  his  credit,  beginning  with  "On  Viol  and 
Flute"  in  1873,  and  ending,  for  the  present,  with 
"Collected  Poems"  of  1911.  But  is  he  a  poet?  Is 
he  the  real  thing?  He  is  an  accomplished  writer 
of  verse,  but  the  real  poet  sings  a  different  kind  of 
song.  I  cull  one  at  random,  his  "Whitethroat  and 
Nightingale."  It  begins: 

I  heard  the  Whitethroat  sing 

Last  eve  at  twilight  when  the  wind  was  dead, 

And  her  sleek  bosom  and  her  fair  smooth  head 

Vibrated,  ruffling,  and  her  olive  wing 

Trembled. 

Quite  pretty,  quite  cultured,  rather  forced,  rather 
literary,  but  not  the  real  thing.  But  poetry  was 
his  first  love,  and  may  be  his  last.  Mr.  Gosse  is 
quite  frank  about  it.  In  1867,  at  18,  he  writes  in 
the  Introduction  to  the  Swinburne  Letters,  "I  was 
having  a  feverish  and  absurd  existence,  infatuated 
with  poetry."  He  sent  some  verses  to  Swinburne, 


Edmund  Gosse  103 

and  Swinburne,  in  Swinburnian  prose,  "turned  them 
down."  But  who  can  check  the  desire  to  write 
verse?  Mr.  Gosse  wrote  more  and  more,  and  in 
1890  Walter  Pater  reviewed  "On  Viol  and  Flute" 
in  the  Guardian.  The  notice  is  quite  nice,  but  on 
the  second  page  is  a  reference  to  "some  of  our  best 
secondary  poetry."  With  that  word  "secondary" 
Pater  let  the  cat  slip  from  the  elusive  Paterian  bag. 
Later  he  calls  Mr.  Gosse  a  "Poetic  Scholar,"  and 
pretends  that  the  title  is  rarer  than  poet,  which,  as 
Euclid  says,  is  absurd.  And  Pater  quotes  one  of  the 
poems  called  "Lying  in  the  Grass,"  of  which  the 
first  stanza  runs : 

I  do  not  hunger  for  a  well-stored  mind, 
I  only  wish  to  live  my  life,  and  find 
My  heart  in  unison  with  all  mankind. 

I  should  have  said  that  aspiration  is  exactly  unlike 
Mr.  Gosse.  But  who  knows  the  heart  of  the 
poet?  Perhaps  now  that  he  is  free  from  the 
Board  of  Trade  and  the  House  of  Lords,  he  will 
tell  us,  ironically  or  elegiacally,  how  a  Poetic 
Scholar  feels  in  a  turbulent  world  of  which  one  of 
the  few  sanities  seems  to  be  the  cultivation  of  Poetry. 


19.    KENNETH  GRAHAME 

IT  was  a  mixed  and  versatile  group  of  men  that 
gathered  around  William  Ernest  Henley,  in 
London,  in  the  early  nineties.  Diverse  in  tem 
perament  and  achievement,  Henley  was  the  cord 
that  bound  them  together — he,  and  the  fact  that  all 
were  writing,  more  or  less,  for  the  Scots  Observer 
and  the  National  Observer. 

Most  of  these  men  earned  their  living  by  their 
pens,  but  there  were  a  few  of  the  group  to  whom 
literature  was  a  well-loved,  but  a  leisure-hour, 
occupation.  They  held  positions  with  regular 
salaries,  and  they  wrote  in  the  evening  or  on  Sun 
day.  I  always  fancied  that  I  could  distinguish 
those  who  had  salaried  positions;  who  were  not 
obliged  to  live  by  their  pens.  They  looked  more 
comfortable;  they  ate  their  food  in  a  more  leisurely 
way;  they  were  readier  to  praise  than  to  blame, 
because  literature  was  to  them  a  delightful  relax 
ation,  not  an  arduous  business. 
Among  these  leisure-hour  gentlemen  of  the  pen  was 
a  tall,  well-knit,  blonde  man,  who  moved  slowly  and 
with  dignity,  and  who  preserved,  amid  the  violent 
discussions  and  altercations  that  enlivened  the  meet 
ings  of  the  group,  a  calm,  comprehending  demeanour 
accompanied  by  a  ready  smile  that  women  would 
call  "sweet." 

104 


Kenneth  Grahamc  105 

And  yet  this  blonde,  temperate,  kindly-looking  man 
had  also  a  startled  air,  such  as  a  fawn  might  show 
who  suddenly  found  himself  on  Boston  Common, 
quite  prepared  to  go  through  with  the  adventure,  as 
a  well-bred  fawn  should  do  under  any  circumstances, 
but  unable  to  escape  wholly  from  the  memory-  of  the 
glades  and  woods  whence  he  had  come.  He  seemed 
to  be  a  man  who  had  not  yet  become  quite  accus 
tomed  to  the  discovery  that  he  was  no  longer  a 
child,  but  grown-up  and  prosperous.  Success  did 
not  atone  for  the  loss  of  the  child  outlook.  Every 
one  of  us  has  his  adjective.  His  adjective  was — 
startled. 

There  were  so  many  men  in  this  group,  so  many 
strangers  were  continually  coming  and  going,  that 
it  was  some  time  before  I  learnt  who  this  blond 
gentleman  of  letters  was.  I  addressed  a  question 
to  my  neighbour  at  one  of  the  dinners.  "Who  is 
that  man  ?"  I  asked.  My  neighbour  replied,  "Ken 
neth  Grahame.  He  wrote  that  jolly  thing  about 
children  called,  The  Olympians.'  Henley  thinks 
very  highly  of  him.  He's  something  in  the  Bank 
of  England." 

Time  passed.  We  met  several  times.  Probably  we 
did  not  have  much  to  say  to  one  another,  and  curi 
ously,  one  of  our  meetings,  a  chance  encounter, 
when  we  did  not  exchange  a  word,  made  a  vivid 
impression  upon  me.  Readers  of  "Pagan  Papers" 
know  that  one  of  the  author's  favourite  spots  is  the 
Hurley  backwater  on  the  Thames,  near  "the  great 
shadow  of  Streatley  Hill,"  near  where  "Dorches 
ter's  stately  roof  broods  over  the  quiet  fields." 


106  Authors  and  I 

By  that  time  I  \vas  a  devoted  admirer  of  Kenneth 
Grahame.  I  had  read  "Pagan  Papers,"  "The 
Golden  Age,"  and  "Dream  Days,"  and  knew  his 
standpoint  and  how  charmingly  he  took  it,  not  with 
the  light-hearted  genius  of  Stevenson,  not  with  the 
playful  erudition  of  the  author  of  "Religio  Medici" 
but  hovering  between  them,  with  a  gay  twist  here, 
and  a  classical  tag  there.  How  well,  I  reflected, 
he  knows  the  heart  and  spirit  of  the  child:  how 
neatly  and  completely  he  analyses  from  the  stand 
point  of  the  child-world  the  stupidity  of  the  adult 
world,  its  interests  in  social  trifles,  and  its  concern 
for  the  formal,  daily  routine  that  the  child  knows 
is  so  unimportant  compared  with  a  discovered  bird's 
nest,  a  castle  in  the  clouds,  or  a  new  place  where  the 
river  may  be  forded. "" 

Well,  on  one  of  my  holiday  journeys  to  the  Thames 
the  train  stopped,  as  usual,  at  a  riverside  junction, 
and  on  the  platform,  welcoming  friends,  was  Ken 
neth  Grahame,  watchful,  a  little  fussy,  bothering 
about  wraps  and  a  carriage,  ignoring  two  children 
who  were  of  the  party,  but  studiously  polite  to 
their  parents. 

I   smiled,   and   continued   to  smile   long  after  the 
train  had  left  the  station  because  I  was  recalling 
to  mind  the  closing  passage  of  "The  Olympians." 
That  night  I  reread  the  lines.     Do  you  remember 
them? 

"Well!  The  Olympians  are  all  past  and  gone. 
Somehow  the  sun  does  not  seem  to  shine  so  brightly 
as  it  used ;  the  trackless  meadows  of  old  time  have 
shrunk  and  dwindled  away  to  a  few  poor  acres.  A 


Kenneth  Grahame  107 

saddening  doubt,  a  dull  suspicion  creeps  over  me. 
Et  in  Arcadia  ego, — I  certainly  did  once  inhabit 
A  ready.  Can  it  be  I,  too,  have  become  an  Olym 
pian?" 

'  When  I  examine  Kenneth  Grahame's  small  sheaf 
of  books  I  discover  that  almost  all  of  them  are  am 
plifications  of  the  idea  expressed  in  "The  Olym 
pians" — that  is,  the  importance  of  the  child  life 
and  viewpoint,  and  the  unimportance  of  the  objects 
pursued  by  the  elders  or  Olympians.  For  literary 
purposes  it  was  perhaps  fortunate  that  the  elders  in 
Kenneth  Grahame's  upbringing  were  uncles  and 
aunts,  not  parents. 

^  He  has  one  other  theme,  that  of  escape :  escape 
from  prose  to  poetry;  escape  from  the  prose  of 
Threadnecdle  Street,  where  the  Bank  of  England 
is  placed,  and  of  which  eventually  he  became  sec 
retary,  to  poetry  of  the  trackless  meadows — to 
Centaurs  or  trout,  to  Orion  or  gypsies,  to  a  human 
uncle  or  an  unsophisticated  artist,  to  anything  that 
had  nothing  to  do  with  banking  and  prosperity. 
"The  Wind  in  the  Willows,"  published  in  1908— 
what  is  it  but  the  attempt  of  an  Olympian  to  see 
the  animal  kingdom,  through  the  eyes  of  a  child, 
as  an  abode  where  things  happen  exactly  as  they  do 
in  the  man  world,  where  the  rat,  the  otter,  the 
badger,  and  the  toad  act  as  the  man  acts.  ' 
"The  Golden  Age"  and  "Dream  Days"  are  his  best 
works. 

^Just  a  few  little  books!  A  banker's  escape  from 
the  prose  and  tedium  of  life.  How  easy  it  seems! 
How  hard  it  is  to  do!  "> 


20.    THE  GROSSMITHS 

THERE  were  George  Grossmith  1  and  George 
Grossmith   2 ;  there  is  George  Grossmith  3 ; 
there  was  Weedon   Grossmith;  there  is  Laurence 
Grossmith. 

This  family  of  entertainers  has  held  the  stage  for 
more  than  half  a  century.  In  the  eighties  George 
Grossmith  1,  a  ripe,  smiling,  humorous,  shortish 
man,  could  hold  an  audience  for  two  hours  and  more 
with  recitals  from  the  works  of  wise,  witty,  and 
tender  eminent  authors.  I  have  sat  entranced 
through  an  evening  at  the  old  Birkbeck  Institution 
in  Breams  Buildings,  Chancery  Lane,  London, 
listening  to  George  Grossmith  1  recite  Dickens. 
There  was  no  band,  no  dancing,  no  songs,  but  it 
never  occurred  to  us  to  be  bored.  His  characteri 
sation  was  neat  and  jolly.  It  remains. 
Indeed  today  whenever  I  read  a  remark  by  Mr. 
Pickwick  the  words  seem  to  be  uttered  by  George 
Grossmith  1.  His  only  other  rival,  that  is  the  only 
other  entertainer  who  drew  capacity  houses  in  the 
old  Birkbeck  Theatre,  was  Samuel  Brandram.  His 
line  was  Shakespeare:  his  triumph  was  to  recite 
an  entire  play  without  a  book  or  note.  George 
Grossmith  1  was  a  jolly,  rubicund  man  who 
chuckled.  Samuel  Brandram  was  an  austere,  well- 
groomed,  aristocratic  personage  who  modulated  his 
1 08 


The  Gr os smiths  109 

voice  to  the  utterance  of  Juliet  or  Polonius  as  if  he 
was  rather  conferring  a  favour  on  those  characters. 
It  was  very  wonderful.  But  Brandram  never  aroused 
the  laughs  that  George  Grossmith  1  did  when  he 
described  how  Mrs.  Gamp  "bore  up,"  or  when  he 
impersonated  Mr.  Weller  diagnosing  the  gout. 
"The  gout,  sir,  is  a  complaint  as  arises  from  too 
much  ease  and  comfort.  If  ever  you're  attacked 
with  the  gout,  sir,  just  you  marry  a  vidder  as  has 
got  a  good  loud  voice,  with  a  decent  notion  of  usin' 
it,  and  you'll  never  have  the  gout  agin."  George 
Grossmith  1  revelled  in  Mr.  Weller  and  Mrs. 
Gamp.  Brandram  was  always  a  little  standoffish 
with  Hamlet,  with  Juliet  and  the  Nurse.  I  know 
now  the  secret  of  the  allure  of  George  Grossmith  1. 
He  had  humour. 

Time  passed:  the  old  gentleman  introduced  his 
offspring  to  the  world.  One  night  he  was  billed 
for  the  first  half  of  the  performance  only.  When 
he  had  finished  he  advanced  to  the  footlights  and 
said:  "Ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  now  have  the 
honour  to  introduce  you  to  my  son,  Mr.  George 
Grossmith,  Jr." 

Tall,  eager,  alert,  with  quick,  birdlike  movements 
and  a  thin  mobile  face  that  never  rested,  George 
Grossmith  2  became,  in  a  moment,  the  most  popular 
of  "drawing-room  entertainers."  He  outran  the 
massive  geniality  of  Corney  Grain.  He  was  so 
much  more  modern ;  he  set  the  pace  which  countless 
light  vaudeville  comedians  have  since  followed. 
Perhaps  he  derived  from  the  nimble  mentality  and 
nimble  body  of  Arthur  Roberts.  Be  that  as  it  may, 


HO  Authors  and  I 

he  was  an  active  humourist.  Probably  I  have  never 
laughed  so  much  in  my  life  as  when  George  Gros- 
smith  2  seized  a  chair  and  danced  round  the  stage 
to  the  refrain  of  "You  should  see  me  dance  the 
polka.  You  should  see  me  cover  the  ground."  It 
was  the  new  humour — a  facet  of  it.  For  the  new 
humour  with  Jerome  K.  Jerome  and  Barry  Pain 
and  Zangwill  and  Chesterton  was  then  beginning 
to  captivate  the  town.  It  was  time  for  George 
Grossmith  1  to  retire.  He  knew  it.  That  continent 
of  humour  called  Charles  Dickens  was  shrinking 
before  the  age  of  speed.  Verbal  quips  and  antics 
drove  from  the  drawing-room  stage  the  leisurely 
urbanities  of  Mr.  Pickwick  and  Mr.  Wellcr. 
George  Grossmith  1,  like  the  Phoenix,  did  his  best 
to  give  the  boy  a  send-off.  Little  did  he  think  what 
a  career  was  in  store  for  George  Grossmith  2 :  little 
did  he  think  that  his  boy  would  emerge  from  a 
drawing-room  entertainer  into  the  chief  actor  at 
important  London  theatres  for  years  and  years,  and 
that  he  would  be  the  chief  cementer  in  that  amazing 
partnership  between  Gilbert  and  Sullivan.  The 
parts  he  played  fitted  him  exactly:  they  were  not 
made  for  him,  he  created  them.  Who  could  sing 
a  patter  song  like  him? 

His  articulation,  his  precision  of  utterance,  his  finish, 
his  air  of  neat  finality,  who  has  rivaled  them? 
Much  as  I  enjoy  the  Gilbert  and  Sullivan  perform 
ances  of  today,  there  is  a  ghost,  there  are  ghosts  at 
the  feasts,  the  ghosts  of  George  Grossmith  2  and 
the  others  who,  under  the  shaggy  martinet  eye  of 
W.  S.  Gilbert,  created  the  parts.  George  Gros- 


The  Grossmiths  III 

smith  2  was  one  of  my  heroes,  and  once  I  drew  very 
near  to  him.  He  lived  at  Camden  Town.  I  farther 
on.  One  night  I  was  travelling  home  by  the  last 
train  when  suddenly  he  sprang  into  the  carriage  at 
Farringdon  Street.  Yes,  it  was  he,  and  he  beguiled 
the  sulphurous  journey  (it  was  before  electrifica 
tion)  humming  to  himself  the  airs  of  a  new  Gilbert 
and  Sullivan  opera  from  a  big  score  book.  He 
ignored  me  utterly,  but  it  was  thrilling.  When  he 
alighted  I  sat  in  the  seat  that  he  had  occupied  and 
dreamed. 

His  father  had  humour;  he  had  wit,  and  his  son, 
George  Grossmith  3,  what  of  him?  He  has  bodily 
agility,  mental  quickness,  he  dresses  wonderfully, 
he  capers  and  patters,  but  I  am  bored  and  pine  for 
the  humour  of  his  grandfather,  or  the  wit  of  his 
father.  Perhaps  he  will  develop:  perhaps  he  has 
not  yet  had  his  chance.  What  chance  has  an  actor 
who  plays  prominent  parts  in  "Go  Bang"  and  "The 
Gaiety  Girl,"  and  who  is  co-author  of  "The  Spring 
Chicken"? 

Weedom  Grossmith  had  humour,  the  ripe  humour 
of  his  father  translated  into  modern  terms.  The 
plays  and  the  theatres  I  have  forgotten,  but  the 
parts  that  he  played,  how  they  lurk  in  memory. 
Explain  Weedom  Grossmith  and  you  can  explain 
humour.  It  bubbled  up ;  it  could  not  be  suppressed ; 
it  was  like  the  perennial  fountain  of  Charles  Lamb 
and  Andrew  Lang.  I  remember  a  whole  scene,  a 
dining-room,  in  which  he  played  the  part  of  a 
pleasant  parvenu.  It  had  just  become  "the  thing" 
to  locate  your  handkerchief  in  your  sleeve,  and 


H2  Authors  and  I 

Weedon,  throughout  the  scene  in  which  he  had  little 
to  say,  was  watching  how  the  blades  who  were 
present  did  it,  and  furtively  imitating  them.  It 
was  by-play  of  the  highest  order,  serious  fun.  Yes, 
he  always  seemed  to  be  serious.  George  Gros- 
smith  3  is  always  aching  to  be  funny.  And  Weedon 
looked  serious;  he  would  talk  seriously  about  paint 
ing  and  collecting  old  furniture.  But  the  twinkle 
was  always  lurking.  It  came  into  his  eyes  one 
morning  on  the  parade  at  Westgate-on-Sea,  when 
I  charged  him,  in  collusion  with  his  brother  George, 
with  being  the  author  of  "The  Diary  of  a  Nobody," 
a  work  of  delightful  humour,  which  was  appearing 
in  the  pages  of  Punch. 

Alas  poor  Yorick!  I  have  for  these  entertainers, 
who  added  to  the  gaiety  of  the  world,  something  of 
the  feeling  that  Francis  Thompson  had  for  the  old 
cricketers  who  added  to  his  infrequent  joy.  Do 
you  know  the  poem? 

AT  LORD'S 

It  is  little  I  repair  to  the  matches  of  the  Southron  folk, 

Though  my  own  red  roses  there  may  blow; 

It  is  little  I  repair  to  the  matches  of  the  Southron  folk, 

Though  the  red  roses  crest  the  caps,  I  know. 

For  the  field  is  full  of  shades  as  I  near  the  shadowy  coast, 

And  a  ghostly  batsman  plays  to  the  bowling  of  a  ghost, 

And  I  look  through  my  tears  on  a  soundless-clapping  host 

As  the  run-stealers  flicker  to  and  fro, 

To  and  fro: 
O  my  Hornby  and  my  Barlow  long  ago! 

Vanished  cricketers!  Vanished  entertainers!  Run 
stealers!  Laugh  stealers!  And  strange  to  say 


The  Grossmiths  113 

George  Grossmith  1,  he  who  loved  Dickens,  is  not 
the  palest.  Of  him  it  may  be  said,  as  the  Master 
said  of  Mr.  Jobling  in  "Martin  Chuzzlewit" — "He 
was  one  of  the  most  comfortable  fellows  you  ever 
saw  in  your  life."  George  2  was  not  comfortable, 
neither  was  Weedon,  neither  is  mercurial  George  3. 
Has  Laurence  an  inclination  that  way? 
A  great  family,  and  still  active. 


21.     THOMAS  HARDY 

T  TSUALLY  I  travel  with  one  of  his  books;  it  is 
^  well  to  pause  in  the  hectic  gabble-gobble  of 
the  week's  reading  and  study  a  page  by  this  master 
of  sombre,  closely-knit  prose.  You  cannot  skip 
Thomas  Hardy:  you  must  pause  to  visualise  such  a 
passage  as  "Marty  heard  the  sparrows  walking 
down  their  long  holes  in  the  thatch  above  her 
sloping  ceiling  to  their  exits  at  the  eaves":  you 
must  pause  to  assimilate  such  a  passage  as — "A 
north  wind  wras  blowing — that  not  unacceptable 
compromise  between  the  atmospheric  cutlery  of  the 
eastern  blast  and  the  spongy  gales  of  the  west  quar 
ter."  In  a  word,  Thomas  Hardy  demands  respect 
—deep  respect  and  diligence — and  unless  you  can 
give  him  that,  in  full  measure,  read  somebody 
else. 

He  is  not  popular.  He  never  was.  Neither  was 
George  Meredith.  The  reason  is  that  each  is  much 
more  than  a  teller  of  tales:  each  is  a  profound  critic 
of  life,  Hardy  as  a  pessimist  tinged  with  irony, 
Meredith  as  an  optimist  tingling  with  buoyancy. 
Each  too  is  a  poet. 

These  two  writers  are  the  two  great  figures  of 
their  time,  stretching  over  into  the  twentieth  cen 
tury,  who  chose  the  novel  as  a  vehicle  for  their 
criticism  and  observation  of  life.  Hardy  obsessed 
114 


Thomas  Hardy  115 

by  the  Unfulfilled  Intention,  Meredith  glorying  in 
the  Fulfilled  Splendour.  Study  these  two  extremes, 
and  you  get  the  mean — which  is  life. 
Once  I  found  myself  in  Dorchester,  and  I  thought, 
being  younger  then  and  bolder,  that  I  would  send 
a  note  to  Thomas  Hardy  by  messenger  (we  had 
been  having,  during  the  past  year,  an  interesting 
correspondence)  asking  if  he  would  allow  me  to 
be  his  companion  on  his  afternoon  walk.  Rightly 
I  thought  that  a  tramp  through  Wessex  with 
Thomas  Hardy  would  be  something  to  tell  my 
grandchildren.  He  replied  that  he  would  be  glad 
to  see  me  at  3  p.  m.  On  my  way  to  Max  Gate  I 
called  at  a  bookshop  in  Dorchester  and  inquired  of 
an  elderly,  prim,  and  rather  tart  female  if  she  had 
a  copy  of  Hardy's  "Jude  the  Obscure,"  which 
had  lately  been  published,  and  which  had  been 
received  by  what  is  known  in  England  as  the 
"rectory  public"  somewhat  superciliously.  I 
think  it  shocked  them.  In  response  to  my  inquiry 
the  prim  female  said  that  she  had  not  a  copy  of 
"Jude  the  Obscure"  in  stock.  "What!"  I  cried, 
"in  his  native  Dorchester  you  have  not  a  copy  of 
the  latest  book  by  the  greatest  living  English 
novelist."  She  eyed  me  with  hauteur,  and,  tossing 
her  head,  said:  "Perhaps  we  have  not  the  same 
opinion  of  Mr.  Hardy  in  Dorchester  as  you  have 
elsewhere." 

I  withdrew.  I  was  too  amused  to  be  angry.  In 
deed,  so  amused  was  I  at  this  encounter  with  the 
"rectory  public"  that  when  I  reached  Max  Gate 
I  told  the  story  to  Mr.  Hardy  with  glee.  He  did 


1 1 6  Authors  and  I 

not  smile:  perhaps  he  looked  a  little  sadder  than 
usual.  For  it  is  a  sad,  tired  face,  very  gentle, 
with  much  sweetness,  yet  alert  as  a  bird's.  He  did 
not  suggest  a  walk:  we  sat  for  an  hour  in  his 
rather  dim  study,  the  trees  swaying  outside,  I 
prattling  literary  gossip,  and  trying,  craftily,  to 
make  him  talk  of  his  work  and  himself.  I  began 
to  succeed.  He  told  me  that  he  was  firmly  resolved 
to  write  no  more  novels  ("Jude  the  Obscure," 
published  in  1895,  was  the  last,  for  "The  Pursuit 
of  the  Well-Beloved,"  published  in  1897,  had  been 
issued  serially  five  years  before).  I  believe  that  he 
was  about  to  tell  me  why  he  had  decided  to  write 
no  more  novels,  when  Mrs.  Hardy  entered  the 
room.  This  was  his  former  wife,  niece  of  Arch 
deacon  Gifford.  Said  Mrs.  Hardy  to  me — "Oh,  I 
want  to  show  you  my  watercolours."  And  I,  being 
weak,  and  courteous  to  the  nieces  of  archdeacons, 
was  wafted  away.  So  my  interview  with  Thomas 
Hardy  ended.  Later,  when  I  was  about  to  depart, 
he  came  into  the  hall  and  looked  at  me  with  sad 
sympathy.  He  accompanied  me  to  the  garden  gate, 
and  as  I  was  in  the  midst  of  bidding  him  a  respectful 
adieu  he  said  in  his  gentle  voice — "By  the  by,  which 
shop  is  it  where  they  are  disinclined  to  stock  my 
books?" 

When  in  1895  Thomas  Hardy  ceased  to  write 
novels  he  turned  to  his  early  love — verse,  that 
strange,  haunting,  melancholy  verse,  rhythmic  prose 
if  you  like,  yet  with  a  lilt  and  an  undercurrent  of 
forlorn  melody  that  distinguishes  it  from  all  other 
forms  of  verse  and  prose. 


Thomas  Hardy  117 

They've  a  way  of  whispering  to  me — 

Fellow-wight  who  yet  abide — 
In  the  muted  measured  note 

Of  a  ripple  under  archways,  or  a  lone  cave's  stillicide. 

And  he  has  produced  "The  Dynasts,"  that  amazing 
epic-drama,  in  three  parts,  1903,  1906,  1908,  which 
Professor  Quiller-Couch  told  his  students  at  Cam 
bridge  is  "the  grandest  poetic  structure  planned  and 
raised  in  England  in  our  time."  And  all  through 
his  long  life  he  has  pursued  his  favourite  recre 
ations  of  architecture  and  old  church  and  dance 
music.  He  was  trained  as  an  architect,  and  careful 
readers  of  his  books  know  how  often  architecture 
delightfully  intrudes.  It  touches  the  pages  of  "The 
Woodlanders,"  which  I  am  now  re-reading  for  the 
third  time,  finding  every  page  as  absorbing  as  of 
old,  and  turning  more  than  once  to  Marty's  final 
cry  of  faithfulness — Marty  who  "looked  almost  like 
a  being  who  had  rejected  with  indifference  the  attri 
bute  of  sex  for  the  loftier  quality  of  an  abstract 
humanism."  Yes,  the  final  note  of  "The  Wood- 
landers"  is  faithfulness.  "...  But  no,  no,  my 
love,  I  can  never  forget  'ec;  for  you  was  a  good 
man,  and  did  good  things." 

It  bears,  does  this  book,  all  the  marks  of  a  Definitive 
edition.  Here  is  the  map  of  the  Wessex  of  the 
Novels,  here  are  Shaston  and  Sherton  Abbas,  out 
lying  over  Blackmoor  Vale;  and  here  is  the  preface, 
signed  T.  H.,  with  its  reference  to  "the  units  of 
human  society  during  their  brief  transit  through 
this  sorry  world." 
Now,  I  hear  of  another  edition  to  be  called  the 


Ii8  Authors  and  I 

"Mellstock."  Yes,  I  shall  have  to  buy  it;  but  not 
for  myself.  Nothing  would  make  me  give  up  my 
marked  and  scored  copies  of  the  1903  Wessex  issue. 
What  will  I  do  with  the  "Mellstock"  edition?  Per 
haps  some  day,  in  some  little  New  England  town, 
pretty  as  a  poem,  I  shall  find  a  library  which  has 
no  Thomas  Hardy  on  its  shelves.  How  nice  it 
would  be  to  drop  the  "Mellstock"  edition  on  the 
doorstep  one  night,  so  that  the  dwellers  may  learn 
what  old  England  was,  in  the  old  days,  old  rural 
England,  seen  through  the  eyes  of  genius.  And  the 
New  England  lad  or  lass,  living,  perhaps,  in  a  town 
with  a  good  old  Dorsetshire  name,  can  say 

William  Dewy,  Tranty  Reuben,   Farmer  Ledlow  la:e  at 

plough 

Robert's  kin,  and  John's  and  Ned's, 
And  the  Squire,   and  Lady  Susan  murmur  mildly  to  me 

now. 


22.     BRET  HARTE 

AT  the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  in  the 
spring  of  1901  to  be  precise,  a  literary 
luncheon  was  given  in  London.  It  was  quite  inter 
esting.  There  were  present  at  least  six  important 
literary  people,  besides  merchants  and  barristers. 
My  kind,  lion-hunting  hostess  had  shown  me  the 
list  beforehand,  and  I  had  noted  with  excitement, 
literary  excitement,  that  among  the  lions  was — Bret 
Harte. 

During  luncheon  I  studied  the  lions,  and  was  able, 
by  their  names  and  manners,  to  identify  five  of  them. 
But  I  could  not  place  Bret  Harte.  Which  was  he? 
Finally  I  addressed  a  whispered  inquiry'  to  my  neigh 
bour.  She  nodded  toward  a  well-groomed  gentle 
man  facing  me  across  the  table.  "What,"  I  ex 
claimed  in  breathless  undertone — "that  Bret 
Harte?" 

Throughout  the  luncheon  I  had  noticed  him  with 
some  amusement  merely  because  he  was  a  dandy. 
I  have  no  objections  to  dandies:  I  like  looking  at 
them ;  they  have  their  place  as  objects  of  interest  in 
the  world,  and  the  mind  is  interested  in  speculating 
on  the  influences  or  notions  that  induce  a  man  to 
overdress.  It  is  not  easy,  after  the  lapse  of  so  many 
years,  to  explain  why  I  thought  this  gentleman  too 
adorned.  Was  it  the  glint  of  wax  on  the  moustache, 
119 


I2O  Authors  and  I 

or  the  hair  too  artfully  curled,  or  the  extra  height 
of  the  collar,  or  the  five  buttons  on  the  sleeve,  or 
the  tricky  cut  of  the  coat,  that  no  tailor  would 
make  on  his  own  initiative? 

That  Bret  Harte?  Yet,  why  not?  Thirty  years 
had  passed  since  he  left  California.  This  prosper 
ous,  feted,  dapper,  lionised  gentleman  had  become 
a  citizen  of  the  old  world:  he  had  held  important 
official  positions — United  States  Consul  at  Crefeld, 
Germany,  and  later  at  Glasgow;  now  he  was  living 
at  Camberley  in  Surrey,  a  highly  respectable  outer 
suburb  of  the  metropolis,  a  place  of  trim  lawns  and 
retired  leisure,  where  .ascetic  bankers  and  portly 
merchants  dwell. 

He  gave  a  twirl  to  his  moustache,  .sighed,  and  re 
arranged  his  cravat.  "Never  mind,"  I  murmured 
to  myself,  but  really  to  him,  "never  mind,  you 
wrote  'The  Luck  of  Roaring  Camp,'  and  'Miggles,' 
and  'Tennessee's  Partner,'  and  'Plain  Language 
from  Truthful  James,'  and  'Dickens  in  Camp,' 
and  'The  Society  upon  the  Stanislaus.'  You  live 
now  at  Camberley,  Surrey,  but  once  you  resided 
elsewhere : 

I  reside  at  Table  Mountain,  and  my  name  is  Truthful 

James; 

I  am  not  up  to  small  deceit  or  any  sinful  games; 
And  I'll  tell  in  simple  language  what  I  know  about  the 

row 
That  broke  up  our  society  upon  the  Stanislow. 

While  this  attractive  dandy  fingered  his  ring  and 
then  glanced  meditatively,  and  with  approval,  at  his 
manicured  finger  nails,  something  like  a  tear 


Bret  Harte  121 

dimmed  my  eyes,  for  this  Bret  Harte  was  a  master 
of  pathos  as  well  as  of  humour.  While  I  watched 
him  the  years  receded  and  there  stole  to  memory  his 

RELIEVING  GUARD    (1864) 

Came  the  relief.    "What  sentry,  ho! 

How  passed  the  night  through  thy  long  waking?" 

"Cold,  cheerless,  dark — as  may  befit 

The  hour  before  the  dawn  is  breaking." 


u  V 


No  sight?  no  sound?"    "No,  nothing  save 
The  plover  from  the  marshes  calling, 
And  in  yon  western  sky,  about 
An  hour  ago,  a  star  was  falling." 

"A  star?    There's  nothing  strange  in  that." 
"No,  nothing;  but  above  the  thicket, 
Somehow  it  seemed  to  me  that  God 
Somewhere  had  just  relieved  a  picket." 

I  looked  at  him  sitting  there  so  complacently,  so 
decorated,  so  content  to  be  in  a  luxurious  London 
house  in  the  year  1901.  I  thought  of  him  as  our 
Bret  Harte,  the  world's  Bret  Harte,  in  those  wonder 
seventeen  years  in  California  between  1854  and 
1871,  when  his  genius  flowered,  apparently  without 
effort,  nourished  by  his  fresh,  uncultured  environ 
ment. 

Who  can  say  that  he  has  been  enthralled  by  any 
writings  of  Bret  Harte,  written  after  he  left  Cali 
fornia?  I  have  read  some  of  them.  I  have  an 
indistinct  memory  of  Spanish  Mexican  local  colour, 
but  these  post-California  things  have  left  no  im 
pression  upon  me.  Like  the  young  Kipling  in 


122  Authors  and  I 

India,  he  was  great  when  he  grew  from  the  soil  and 
with  the  soil,  but  when  he  fared  forth  and  found 
culture — culture  caught  and  desiccated  the  truant. 
Antaeus,  we  are  told,  was  invincible  so  long  as  he 
remained  in  contact  with  his  mother  earth.  Bret 
Harte  left  California  in  1871,  his  years  being  32. 
His  work  was  done,  but  nobody  thought  so. 
His  journey  east  has  been  described  as  a  triumphal 
progress;  he  was  the  most  popular  of  American 
authors,  and  England  hailed  him  as  "the  long- 
looked  for  American  laureate."  He  came  east  to 
affluence.  The  Heracles  of  success  held  him  aloft, 
away  from  his  Californian  earth,  and  in  1878  he 
dropped  into  the  nice  little  post  of  Consul  at  Cre- 
feld,  Germany. 

I  watched  him  tenderly  at  that  luncheon  party. 
One  wing  of  his  moustache  had  fallen  somewhat 
out  of  curl :  he  gave  it  a  brisk  upward  twist  with  his 
elegant  white  hand.  That  was  the  hand  that  had 
written  of  Miggles,  and  Stumpy,  and  Kentuck,  and 
Mr.  John  Oakhurst,  and  Tennessee's  Partner,  and 
Brown  of  Calaveras,  and  of  the  Aged  Stranger,  and 
the  Old  Major,  and  Jim,  and  Flynn  of  Virginia, 
and  that  wonderful  spelling  bee  at  Angel's  reported 
by  Truthful  James,  and  Her  Letter,  and  His  An 
swer,  also  reported  by  the  Truthful  One.  Well, 
that  suffices,  that  is  enough  for  one  man.  I  never 
addressed  a  remark  to  him  at  that  luncheon  party. 
I  couldn't.  Perhaps  he  had  forgotten  all  about 
California.  Perhaps  not. 


Bret  Harte  123 

I  have  not  forgotten,  because  I  have  just  re-read  all 
his  CaJifornian  sketches,  and  all  his  poems,  and  I 
am  amazed  to  find  how  little  I  had  forgotten.  I 
snivelled  (such  happy  snivelling)  as  I  always  shall, 
when  the  Judge  toasts  Miggles,  and  when  the  Luck 
"rastled"  with  Kentuck's  finger,  and  when  Tennes 
see's  partner  "passing  by"  just  looks  in  at  the  court, 
and,  yes,  when  by  the  camp  fire  beneath  the  Sierras 
the  boy  reads  "aloud  the  book  wherein  the  Master 
had  writ  of  'Little  Nell.'  "  It  is  easy,  of  course, 
for  anybody  to  find  fault— his  treacly  sentiment,  his 
drawn-out  pathos,  his  cheap  moralising;  yet  if  you 
admit  all  these  blemishes,  which  I  don't,  how  splen 
did,  how  unequalled  he  is.  O  rare  young  Francis 
Bret  Harte  of  California! 

[  am  glad  that  I  was  not  forced  to  read  Bret 
Harte  at  school,  that  I  came  to  him  by  chance  and 
with  joy.  With  him  as  guide  I  entered  a  new 
world,  which,  after  all  these  years,  is  still  new. 


23.     JOHN  HAY 

MIDWAY  through  dinner,  in   the  year  1898, 
at  one  of  those  cosmopolitan  gatherings  held 
at   the    Hotel   Cecil   by   the   American    Society    in 
London,  I  was  told  that  John  Hay  was  at  the  high 
table. 

As  soon  as  the  speeches  began  I  sidled  round  toward 
the  high  table  to  have  a  particular  look  at  him. 
For  John  Hay  as  a  man  of  letters  interested  me 
immensely.  Incidentally,  at  that  time,  he  was 
American  Ambassador  to  the  Court  of  St.  James; 
but  that  might  happen  to  anybody.  What  interested 
me  was  to  see  the  author  of  two  such  disparate 
works  as  the  rough  "]im  Bludso,"  written  as  far 
back  as  1870,  and  the  exquisite  speech  he  made  in 
1898  at  the  Omar  Khayyam  Club,  which  set  all 
literary  London  talking.  As  for  "Jim  Bludso," 
everybody  knows  it,  and  most  literary  folk  can 
quote — 

He  weren't  no  saint — but  at  jedgment 
I'd  run  my  chance  with  Jim, 
'Longside  of  some  pious  gentlemen 
That  wouldn't  shook  hands  with  him. 
He  seen  his  duty,  a  dead  sure  thing— 
And  went  for  it  thar  and  then; 
And  Christ  ain't  a-going  to  be  too  hard 
On  a  man  that  died  for  men. 
124 


John  Hay  125 

"Jim  Bludso"  and  "Little  Breeches"  are  the  best  of 
Hay's  "Pike  County  Ballads."     "They  rolled  out 
spontaneously,"  says  Mr.  Thayer  in   his  excellent 
"Life  of  John  Hay,"  and  they  ran  round  the  Eng 
lish-speaking   world.      Eager   papers   quoted    them. 
John    Hay,   who   by   instinct   and   training  was  a 
modish  classicist  (he  was  a  bosom  friend  of  Henry 
Adams)  was  almost  ashamed  of  the  success  of  these 
rough  ballads.     Their  popularity  annoyed  him,  so 
much  so  that  he  flatly  refused  Stedman's  invitation 
to  include  them  in  "An  American  Anthology."    As 
a  youth  he  desired  to  be  a  poet,  a  real  poet,  but 
his  poetical  verse  (as  Mayor  Hylan  might  call  it) 
is  no  better  than  the  verse  produced  by  thousands 
of  young  men  of  culture  and  breeding.    Quite  early 
he  discovered  that  for  him  poetry  was  not  a  fame 
or    a    bread-winner.      Perhaps    that    was    why    he 
dropped  his  second  name  of — Milton. 
Two  points  of   interest  attach   to   "Jim    Bludso." 
Bret    Harte's    "Plain    Language    from    Truthful 
James"  had  been  published  a  month  before.    Dialect 
was  in  the  air.     Bret  Harte  used  a  Chinaman,  John 
Hay  a   Westerner.      Possibly,   probably,    Hay  had 
read  the  plain  language  of  Truthful  James.     When 
J.  Hay  "dashed  off"  "Jim  Bludso"  in  the  train  from 
Boston,   it   is  said,   the  poem   lacked   the  last  two 
lines.     Hay  showed  it  to  Whitelaw  Reid,  editor  of 
the    Tribune;   he   growled    that   it    needed    "some 
thought  drawn  from  it  that  was  vital  and  would 
live."     So   Hay   sat  down   and   dashed   off   "And 
Christ  ain't  going  to  be  too  hard  On  a  man  that 
died  for  men."     John   Hay  was  a  ready  man,  as 


126  Authors  and  I 

ready  with  a  Poem  as  with  a  Treaty,  with  a  Witti 
cism  as  with  an  Arbitration,  or  with  an  epigram 
matic  couplet  such  as — 

There  are  three  species  of  creatures  who  when  they  seem 

coming  are  going. 
When  they  seem  going  they  come:     Diplomats,   women, 

and  crabs. 

Knowing  all  this  you  may  imagine  that  I  crept  with 
some  stealthy  fervour  toward  the  high  table  to  have 
a  better  look  at  John  Hay.  On  the  way  I  thought 
of  his  "Castilian  Days."  That  is  a  delightful  book. 
It  was  my  companion  on  my  first  visit  to  Spain  and 
of  all  the  books  I  read  on  Spain  that  was  the  cheer- 
fulest  and  the  most  intimate  and  informing.  As 
I  drew  near  the  high  table,  bobbing  behind  an  Hotel 
Cecil  palm  when  a  speaker  paused  in  his  oratory, 
suddenly,  I  remembered  that  John  Hay  had  been 
for  four  years  one  of  Abraham  Lincoln's  secre 
taries,  beginning  at  the  age  of  23.  He  was  a  Lin 
coln  man.  He  had  been  in  daily,  and  often  nightly 
converse,  with  the  greatest  American.  Had  John 
Hay  done  nothing  else,  that,  by  itself,  would  have 
been  ample  honour  for  one  life.  I  tried  to  recall  a 
passage  from  a  letter  he  wrote  to  J.  G.  Nicolay,  his 
fellow  biographer  of  Lincoln.  It  was  a  passage 
setting  a  standard  for  their  joint  efforts.  Whii^ 
I  was  trying  to  recall  it  I  reached  the  end  of  the 
high  table — and  there  was  John  Hay. 
He  looked  a  severe  man,  a  thinker,  a  logician  who 
would  pursue  a  subject  to  its  logical  conclusion.  It 
was  an  alert  face,  stern  in  repose,  but  when  he  spoke 


John  Hay  127 

it  lightened  like  a  gleam  of  sun  through  set,  grey 
clouds.  It  was  a  tired,  rather  pugnacious  face,  the 
face  of  a  man  with  whom  it  would  not  be  easy  or 
safe  to  trifle.  Troops  of  friends  he  had,  some  very 
intimate,  some  of  them  great  men,  but  it  has  been 
said  that  nobody  ever  slapped  John  Hay  on  the  back. 
His  mind  was  witty,  not  humorous.  He  could 
never,  like  Mark  Twain,  have  explained  at  a  fash 
ionable  London  assembly  that  the  reason  he  carried 
a  cotton  umbrella  was  because  Englishmen  would 
not  consider  it  worth  stealing.  His  wit  was  of  a 
different  kind,  as  when  he  wrote  to  Henry  Adams: 
"I  have  spent  the  last  cent  I  got  for  'Democracy,'  in 
minerals  for  Mrs.  Hay."  (It  was  an  open  secret 
that  the  novel  "Democracy,"  published  anony 
mously,  was  by  Henry  Adams.)  Oh,  and  as  I  gazed 
at  John  Hay  I  remembered  that  another  anony 
mous  novel,  "The  Bread  Winners,"  was  written  by 
this  versatile  man  in  the  winter  of  1882-83.  It  was 
the  novel  of  the  year,  but  Hay  never  acknowledged 
the  authorship.  Silent  John  Hay!  As  I  gazed  his 
face  grew  stern  again.  Was  he  bored?  The 
speeches,  I  remember,  were  rather  tedious.  Some 
thing  in  his  face  seemed  queerly  familiar;  then  I 
remembered  that  when  Zorn  etched  Hay's  head  it 
was  said  that  he  gave  him  "the  badger-like  appear 
ance  which  the  admirers  of  Zorn  so  greatly 
value." 

Later  in  the  evening  I  drew  closer  to  John  Hay. 
It  was  in  the  prosaic  and  democratic  cloakroom.  I 
had  made  my  way  to  the  table,  and  was  about  to 
tender  my  ticket,  when  I  noticed  that  the  man 


128  Authors  and  I 

behind  me  was  John  Hay,  patiently  waiting,  looking 
rather  amused  at  being  one  of  the  howling  prole 
tariat.  I  vacated  my  place,  and  motioned  him  for 
ward.  He  thanked  me  with  a  smile;  today  that 
smile  is  he.  In  a  glimpse  I  saw  the  man,  and 
understood  the  charm  he  had  for  those  who  knew 
him.  That  smile  seemed  to  lubricate  my  memory, 
for,  on  the  way  home,  the  passage  I  had  been  trying 
to  remember,  the  passage  wherein  he  set  the  standard 
for  writing  the  "Life  of  Lincoln,"  and  gave  his 
creed  as  an  historian,  came  to  me.  I  discovered 
afterwards  that  it  is  printed  in  a  letter  addressed  to 
Nicolay,  on  Aug.  10,  1885: 

"We  must  not  write  a  stump  speech  in  eight  vols., 
8vo.  We  will  not  fall  in  with  the  present  tone  of 
blubbering  sentiment,  of  course.  But  we  ought  to 
write  the  history  of  those  times  like  two  everlasting 
angels  who  know  everything,  judge  everything,  tell 
the  truth  about  everything,  and  don't  care  a  twang 
of  our  harps  about  one  side  or  the  other.  There 
will  be  one  exception.  We  are  Lincoln  men  all 
through.  But  in  other  little  matters,  let  us  look 
at  men  as  insects,  and  not  blame  the  black  beetle 
because  he  is  not  a  grasshopper." 
John  Hay  and  Henry  Adams,  so  different  yet  so 
closely  allied,  one  so  effective,  the  other  so  ineffec 
tive,  one  seeing  the  world  through  a  telescope,  the 
other  through  a  magnifying  glass,  to  me  stand  out 
as  the  two  finest  American  minds,  short  of  genius,  of 
their  time.  At  Washington,  Mr.  Thayer  tells  us, 
they  walked  together  every  afternoon — "Hay  with 


John  Hay  129 

one  arm  crooked  behind  his  back — two  small  men, 
busily  discussing  great  topics  or  .  .  ." 
Every  honour  came  to  John  Hay,  every  success, 
including  a  rich  and  charming  wife,  but  all  his 
honours,  in  these  days  of  lesser  men  and  lingering 
squabbles,  fade  before  one  honour  that  was  supreme. 
For  four  years  he  walked  and  talked  with,  watched 
and  listened  to  that  Great  Companion — Abraham 
Lincoln. 

The  knowledge  that  he  was  a  Lincoln  man  gave 
to  John  Hay  a  wisdom  passing  the  wisdom  of  states 
men  and  poets. 


24.     W.  E.  HENLEY 

IT  was  in   1890  that  I  first  met   Henley  in  the 
Art   Journal   office.     He    had    been    appointed 
consulting  editor  of  that  venerable  magazine. 
How  well    I    remember   the   day   he   attended   his 
first    Tuesday    committee    meeting.       Imagine    a 
Viking  blown  by  storm  into  a  Dorcas  assembly,  and 
you  may  visualise  the  advent  of  W.  E.  H.  into  the 
precise  Art  Journal  parlour.      He  opened  the  gates 
of  French  art  to  me — Corot,  Rousseau,  Daumier: 
he  opened  the  gates  of  literature,  and  I  shall  never 
again  hear  such  talk  as  that  I  heard  from  men  who 
gathered,  Saturday  evenings,  in  his  house  at  Chis- 
wick*    He  was  always  the  chief.     I  hear  now  his 
laugh,  his  thunder,  his  softness,  his  savage  trucu- 
lence,  his  infinite  gentleness,  when  he  spoke  of  the 
child,  that  wonder  child,  Margaret  Emma  Henley, 
1888-94,  about  whom  he  wrote  two  poems,  one  in 
1891,  the  other  in  1897,  which  now  stands  as  the 
Epilogue  to  his  "Poems"- -"a  little  exquisite  Ghost, 
Between  us,  smiling  with  the  serenest  eyes,  Seen  in 
this  world."     The  book  about  this  child  was  never 
written.     He  tried,  but  could  not  do  it. 
In  after  years  I  took  Francis  Thompson  to  call  upon 
Henley  when  he  was  living  in  Muswell  Hill.     By 
that  time  Henley  had  "arrived."     He  was  known 
to  all  literary  England.    Fame  had  accosted  him  and 
130 


W.  E.  Henley  131 

tarried.  He  nad  expressed  a  wish  to  see  Francis 
Thompson.  This,  to  me,  was  tantamount  to  a 
Royal  command,  so  I  conveyed  the  younger  poet  to 
Muswell  Hill,  not  without  difficulty,  and  not  with 
out  apprehension  as  we  approached  the  house,  for 
Francis  Thompson  had  no  sense  of  time.  Our 
appointment  was  for  three  o'clock;  it  was  five 
minutes  past  five  when  I  rang  the  bell.  All  went 
well,  however.  Thompson  idolised  Henley,  and 
quite  naturally  took  a  stool  at  his  feet  while  Henley, 
a  splendid  leonine  figure,  hair  and  beard  now  white, 
lounged  in  a  high  chair.  Each  received  from  the 
other  high  compliments,  and  for  a  considerable  space 
of  time  each  compared  the  other,  courteously  and 
emphatically,  to  Virgil. 

Francis  Thompson,  like  many  others,  indeed  all  the 
young  Intellectuals,  had  become  Henleyites  through 
his  editorship  of  the  Scots  Observer,  a  sixpenny 
weekly,  the  title  of  which  was  afterward  changed 
to  the  National  Observer.  Henley  edited  this  fight 
ing  journal  from  1889  to  1893.  It  was  the  best 
written  paper  of  the  day;  it  was  anti-sentiment, 
anti-cant,  anti-humbug;  it  was  the  antithesis  to  the 
eloquent  and  robustious  sentimentality  with  which 
Clement  Scot  filled  the  columns  of  the  Daily  Tele 
graph;  it  was  high  Tory;  it  sided  with  the  cla»ei 
and  scorned  the  masses;  it  was  brilliant  and  witty 
and  hard ;  it  was  written  in  the  best  English,  and 
every  article  (except  the  signed  ones)  bore  the 
impress  of  Henley's  personality.  He  was  the  most 
conscientious  of  editors,  and  the  most  autocratic. 
Even  when  he  returned  an  article  it  would  come 


132  Authors  and  I 

back  to  the  unfortunate  author  scored  all  over  with 
Henley's  corrections.  But  he  forced  his  staff  to 
do  their  best,  and  no  young  writing  man  of  the 
period  was  content  until  he  had  an  article  accepted 
by  Henley  for  the  National  Observer,  and  later 
for  the  New  Review. 

Kipling's  "Barrack  Room  Ballads,"  Barrie's  best 
early  work,  appeared  in  the  National  Observer,  and 
Conrad's  "Nigger  of  the  Narcissus"  in  the  New 
Review.  Authors  were  pilloried,  politicians  were 
pounded,  faddists  were  flaunted.  It  may  be  said 
that  literary  London  was  divided  into  those  who 
hated  and  those  who  adored  Henley.  We  who  knew 
the  gentle  side  of  Henley's  nature  also  knew  that 
in  his  chief  henchman,  Charles  Whibley,  he  had 
an  adviser  whose  will  to  destroy  the  Clement  Scott 
element  in  literature  and  journalism  was  stronger 
than  Henley's;  it  was  Whibley's  pen  and  influence 
that  gave  to  the  National  Observer  its  bias  and 
its  bludgeon.  It  was  the  most  quoted  journal  of 
the  time,  but  it  did  not  sell.  The  great  public 
was,  and  is  still,  faithful  to  Clementscottalism.  Hen 
ley  himself  told  me  that  the  proprietor  of  the  Na 
tional  Observer  said  to  him:  "I  would  keep  the 
paper  going  if  I  could  ever  look  forward  to  a  pay 
ing  circulation  of  1000  copies  a  week." 
But  it  was  as  a  Poet  that  Henley  wanted  to  be 
known,  remembered.  So  I  was  glad,  one  day  in 
1920,  when  I  saw  in  a  bookseller's  window  in  New 
York,  the  definitive  edition  of  William  Ernest 
Henley's  "Poems."  I  bought  it,  I  talked  with  the 
Bookseller,  and  said  to  myself.  This  is  fame;  this 


W.  E.  Henley  133 

would  have  pleased  Henley;  this  would  have 
brought  a  smile  into  his  large,  twinkling  blue  eyes. 
Henley  was  a  human  person,  and  to  have  known 
that  he  is  remembered  and  honoured,  3000  miLj  off, 
years  after  he  had  passed  away,  would  have  con 
soled  him  for  a  lot  of  adversity  and  neglect.  For 
this  ardent  bookseller  knew  all  about  Henley ;  knew 
that  Rodin  had  addressed  him  as  "Dear  and  great 
friend";  that  in  1898  his  "Essay  on  Burns"  had 
been  crowned  by  the  "Academy";  that  he  had 
written  a  play,  "Deacon  Brodie"  in  collaboration 
with  his  friend,  R.  L.  Stevenson ;  that  he  was  part 
author  of  an  amazing  Slang  Dictionary,  and  that  he 
had  edited  the  Tudor  Translations  and  the  Works 
of  Byron. 

Re-reading  his  "Poems"  I  am  surprised  to  find  how 
many  numbers  have  become  part  of  my  poetical 
anthology. 

Some  of  them  Vernon  Blackburn  set  to  music.  He 
would  sing  them  to  Henley — and  to  me.  They  sing 
still. 

Perhaps  these  poems  meant  all  the  more  to  me  be 
cause  I  loved,  admired,  and  reverenced  Henley. 
Yet  my  affection  does  not  blind  me  to  his  demerits. 
He  was  a  mighty  huntsman  with  the  pen,  a  traf 
ficker  in  personal  and  arresting  sentences,  and  when 
the  inspiration  was  not  entirely  fresh  and  pure 
he  would  bend  words  to  his  service,  force  them 
into  forcible  collocations,  so  that  in  certain  of  his 
poems,  and  in  some  of  his  prose,  the  artifice  out 
runs  the  art.  I  could  never  be  enthusiastic  over 
his  "London  Voluntaries"  and  "Arabian  Nights 


134  Authors  and  I 

Entertainments."  They  seem  to  be  saying,  "We 
will  be  great  poems." 

He  is  never  dull,  never  banal,  never  commonplace, 
but  sometimes  I  am  aware  that  Pegasus  is  being 
forced  to  a  gallop.  Like  R.  L.  S.  he  was  a  stylist, 
but  Henley  lacked  R.  L.  S.'s  air  of  gay  ease,  also 
Stevenson's  facility  for  popularity.  Perhaps  it  is 
this  that  made  Henley,  in  after  years,  jealous  of 
his  old  friend,  and  vindictive  to  him.  Still,  al 
though  in  "Views  and  Reviews"  Henley  skims  the 
surface  of  his  subjects  overmuch,  and  sometimes 
hides  his  lack  of  spadework  in  the  gusto  and  quips 
of  his  style,  every  page  is  readable,  and  the  last 
essay  on  R.  A.  M.  S.  (Bob  Stevenson,  as  he  was 
called),  Louis'  brilliant  cousin,  is  an  essay  to  ponder 
and  to  treasure,  to  rejoice  in,  and  to  be  very  glad 
to  have  and  to  hold. 

This  volume  of  his  "Poems"  contains  a  reproduc 
tion  of  the  bust  Rodin  made  of  his  "dear  and 
great  friend."  It  is  fine,  manly,  yet  gentle,  and 
the  eyes  have  the  half-closed,  peering  look,  a  for 
ward  glance,  that  Henley  so  often  had  in  intense 
repose.  But  it  cannot  give  the  colour  of  the  man, 
the  tangle  of  red  hair,  the  strong  red  beard,  the 
fair  complexion,  the  Viking  look  of  him;  and  it 
cannot  give  his  explosions  of  laughter,  the  quizzical 
look  in  his  blue  eyes,  and  the  way  he  manoeuvred 
his  big  maimed  body,  ever  seeking  a  way  to  rest 
it,  kneeling  on  a  chair,  with  his  hands  clutching 
the  rail,  crouching  this  way  and  that  way,  and 
talking,  always  talking. 


W.  E.  Henley  135 

Henley  was  a  great  force,  a  noble  influence.    Time 
passes.    Why  is  there  no  biography  of  him? 
Let  me  end  with  a  snatch  from  one  of  his  poems, 
persuasive,  stronger  than   force: 

My  task  accomplished  and  the  long  day  done, 

My  wages  taken,  and  in  my  heart 

Some  late  lark  singing, 

Let  me  be  gathered  to  the  quiet  west 

In  the  eleventh  line  of  the  poem  there  is  this— 
The  lark  sings  on. 


25.     "O.  HENRY" 

WILLIAM  SYDNEY  PORTER  chose  the 
pen-name  of  O.  Henry  because  he  had  an 
unfailing  instinct  in  such  matters.  What  an  admir 
able  pen-name  O.  Henry  is!  It  is  just  right,  but  do 
not  ask  me  to  explain  why.  The  titles  he  chose  for 
his  volumes  of  stories  are  also  just  right.  He 
called  his  first  book  of  Latin  American  tales  "Cab 
bages  and  Kings."  Perhaps  not  immediately  but 
soon  the  reader  realises  how  right  it  was  to  snatch 
a  line  from  Lewis  Carroll 

"The  time  has  come,"  the  Walrus  said, 
"To  talk  of  many  things; 
Of  shoes  and  ships  and  sealing  wax, 
And  cabbages  and  kings." 

And  "The  Four  Million"  for  his  New  York 
stories  about  the  people,  always  the  people.  How 
pat  in  explanation  is  his  introductory  note — "Not 
very  long  ago  some  one  invented  the  assertion  that 
there  were  only  Four  Hundred  people  in  New 
York  City  who  were  really  worth  noticing.  But  a 
wiser  man  has  arisen — the  census  taker — and  his 
larger  estimate  of  human  interest  has  been  pre 
ferred  in  making  out  the  field  of  these  little  stories 
of  the  'Four  Million.' " 
When  the  new  census  is  established  perhaps  his 


"O.  Henry"  137 

publishers  will  change  the  title.  It  will  not  matter. 
O.  Henry's  men,  women  and  observations  do  not 
change,  whether  their  number  grows  more  or  less. 
They  are  changeless  because  they  are  drawn  and 
shaped  from  life. 

Who  is  this  O.  Henry?  Why  is  he  so  amazingly 
popular?  Why  is  he  read  with  delight  by  the 
Four  Hundred  as  well  as  by  the  Four  Million? 
Why  did  a  lively  Englishman,  Mr.  S.  P.  B.  Mais, 
when  in  1917  he  collected  his  studies  in  literature, 
call  the  volume  "From  Shakespeare  to  O.  Henry." 
That,  too,  is  an  excellent  title.  Pedantic  people 
purse  their  lips  and  shake  their  heads.  But  what 
is  a  title  for?  To  describe  a  book,  to  arrest  atten 
tion,  to  lodge  the  book  in  memory.  Mr.  Mais  de 
sired  to  relate  his  literary  adventures  from  Shake- 
rpeare  and  the  elder  writers,  through  Samuel  Butler, 
Thomas  Hardy,  Richard  Middleton,  John  Mase- 
field,  Rupert  Brooke,  to  the  present,  to  such  a 
vitality,  so  American,  so  racial,  so  untouched  by 
schools,  class  rooms  and  textbooks  as  O.  Henry.  He 
was  curious  about  O.  Henry;  he  wondered  why 
Professor  Leacock  in  writing  of  this  "mere  story 
teller"  should  call  his  article  "The  Amazing  Genius 
of  O.  Henry."  He  was  eager  to  know  why 
O.  Henry  should  have  been  called  by  various  ad 
mirers — "The  American  Kipling,"  "The  American 
de  Maupassant,"  "The  American  Gogol,"  "Our 
Fielding  a  la  mode,"  "The  Bret  Harte  of  the  City," 
"The  Y.  M.  C.  A.  Boccaccio,"  "The  Homer  of 
the  Tenderloin,"  "The  Twentieth  Century  Haroun- 
Al-Raschid,"  "The  Greatest  Living  Writer  of  the 


138  Authors  and  I 

Short  Story."  If  he  could  have  looked  forward 
a  year  or  so  he  would  have  been  impressed  to  know 
that  in  1918  the  American  Society  of  Arts  and 
Sciences  decided  that  their  memorial  to  O.  Henry 
should  take  the  form  of  prizes  awarded  annually 
for  the  two  best  short  stories  written  during  the 
year. 

So  it  fell  out  that  "From  Shakespeare  to  O.  Henry" 
was  the  right  title,  as  were  "Cabbages  and  Kings," 
and  "The  Four  Million." 

Is  all  this  praise  of  O.  Henry  justified?  Is  a 
slangy,  boisterous  writer  of  short  stories  worthy  such 
high  honour?  I  think  so.  Henry  did  what  the  young 
Kipling  did  some  years  before;  what  Giotto  had 
done  in  art  cenuries  before.  It  is  the  old  story,  often 
repeated;  they  went  back  to  life.  They  spurned 
the  literary  and  art  convention;  they  looked  at 
men  and  women  about  them  with  keen  eyes  and 
sympathetic  hearts;  they  tell  us  about  them  in  the 
language  of  our  own  day,  laughing,  crying,  scorn 
ing,  applauding  as  their  theme  urges  them  to  laugh, 
cry,  scorn  or  applaud.  The  young  Kipling  and  O. 
Henry  cared  nothing  about  art  for  art's  sake;  they 
grabbed  at  life;  they  were  watchers  of  life,  mixers 
with  life;  the  yarns  they  told  were  about  life.  But 
each  offers  something  more  than  the  mere  yarn; 
each  consciously  or  unconsciously  exposes  an  esoteric 
as  well  as  an  exoteric  meaning  ("O.  Henry  gives 
you  something  to  think  about,"  said  my  Negro 
elevator  boy),  and  as  each  writes  about  the  Four 
Million,  not  the  Four  Hundred,  each  gets  the 
approval  of  the  Four  Million. 


"O.  Henry"  139 

I    do    not   compare   or   contrast    O.    Henry   with 
other  masters  of   short  stories.      He  is  just   him 
self;   he   goes   his   own    rapid,    riotous  way,    with 
everything    shaped    in    his    mind:    he    twists    and 
turns   in   the   narrative,   he  accumulates   the   char 
acteristics  of  his  characters;  he  peppers   the  page 
with    argot,   street   humour,   misquotations    (inten 
tional),  tinges  the  narrative  with  pathos  and  pity, 
and  then  at  the  end  starts  the  surprise — staggering, 
ironical,  subtle — but  always  a  surprise.   It  makes 
my  elevator  boy  think ;  it  makes  me  think. 
I    acknowledge   myself   an    Ohenryite.      A    decade 
ago  in  London  I  was  one  of  those  who  by  chance 
read  "The  Trimmed  Lamp"  volume    (it  contains 
"Brickdust    Row,"    "The    Pendulum,"   and    "The 
Buyer  from  Cactus  City")   and  forthwith  I  went 
out  and  bought  the  other  eleven  O.  Henry  volumes. 
But  I  do  not  think  O.  Henry  should  be  read  in 
volume  form.     The  stories  were  written  for  news 
papers   and    magazines,   and    thus   they   should    be 
enjoyed.     In   the  volume  form  I  am  always  con 
scious  that  there  are  other  stories  waiting  for  me. 
That  makes  me  hasty ;  makes  me  skip.     In  a  news 
paper  there  is  one  story,  no  more.     I  read  it  once. 
I   read   it   twice.     Strange   newspapers  come   into 
my   house.     They   are   the   newspapers   that   have 
fallen  into  the  delightful  habit  of  republishing  an 
O.  Henry  story  each  day.     Yesterday  I  read  "The 
Cop    and    the    Anthem,"    the    day    before    "The 
Assessor  of  Success,"   and   I   am   looking  forward 
to    rereading    "A    Lickpcnny    Lover"    and    "The 
Social  Triangle." 


I4O  Authors  and  I 

He  wrote  over  250  short  stories,  some  of  them 
less  good  than  others.  In  the  wildest  or  windiest, 
or  most  improbable,  there  are  always  flashes  of 
insight.  He  wrote  them  at  the  rate  of  one  a  week; 
in  some  weeks  he  would  turn  out  two,  even  three. 
A  few  were  written  in  prison.  Prof.  Alphonso 
Smith  of  the  University  of  Virginia,  who  has  writ 
ten  the  standard  "Life  of  O.  Henry,"  makes  it 
quite  clear  that  he  was  guiltless  of  the  crime  of 
misappropriating  bank  funds  for  which  he  was 
charged  and  sentenced.  Money  was  not  his  weak 
ness.  A  well-known  publishing  firm,  which  had 
refused  his  short  stories  when  he  was  unknown, 
sent  him  a  check  for  $1,000  after  he  had  become 
famous — for  anything  from  his  pen.  He  returned 
the  check.  He  was  a  giver;  he  bestowed  money 
as  hastily  as  he  made  it. 

In  New  York,  as  in  North  Carolina,  where  he 
was  born,  in  New  Orleans,  in  Texas,  he  mixed  with 
the  people.  His  material  was  always  drawn  from 
contact  with  characters — a  look,  a  word  and  his 
imagination  began  to  work.  All  sorts  and  condi 
tions  of  men  (except  what  the  world  calls  gentle 
folk)  flash  through  his  pages,  and  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  women;  but  the  nearest  to  his  heart 
were  the  little  shopgirls,  pretty,  poor,  steering  their 
fragile  barq»es  through  the  shoals  of  earning  a 
living.  Rightly  was  O.  Henry  called  by  Nicholas 
Vachel  Lindsay  "the  little  shopgirls'  knight." 
Through  Galsworthy's  "Justice"  the  law  relating 
to  solitary  confinement  was  humanised.  Many  of 
O.  Henry's  stories,  sociological  documents,  state 


11 0.  Henry"  I4I 

conditions  as  they  are  in  terms  of  humour,  pity,  sym 
pathy  and  irony.    I  hope  lawmakers  read  them. 
Regarding  advice  to  literary  aspirants  O.  Henry  was 
quite   himself.      "There  are   two   rules,"   he  said. 
"The  first  rule  is  to  write  stories  that  please  your 
self.     There  is  no  second  rule." 
His  metier  was  to  produce  short  stories,   and  of 
course  people  tried  to  persuade  him  to  write  a  long 
novel.      Friends   are   always   striving    to    make   a 
creative  artist  do  something  against   his   instincts. 
At  length  O.  Henry  entertained  the  idea  of  a  novel, 
and  in   1909  or   1910  wrote  a  long  letter  on  the 
novel  he  might  write  if-     The  letter  was  never 
finished.     While  he  was  writing  it  he  was  caught 
up  in  the  greatest  adventure  of  all. 
The  little  shopgirls'  knight! 

Do   you    remember   at     the    end     of     Meredith's 
"Rhoda  Fleming"  that  last  cry  of  Dahlia's— "Help 
poor  girls." 
O.  Henry  helped  them. 


T 


26.     MAURICE  HEWLETT 

HE  Record  Office,  London,  hides.  You  may 
walk  up  Chancery  Lane  and  not  notice  it ;  but 
there  it  is,  a  little  east  of  the  Lane,  near  Fleet 
Street,  a  noble  building,  rather  spick  and  span,  a 
cheerful  contrast  to  the  musty,  mouldering  docu 
ments  that  lie  within.  When  I  think  of  the  Record 
Office,  which  is  not  often,  I  think  of  Domesday 
Book,  and  Maurice  Hewlett. 

Domesday  Book  was  completed  in  1086:  Maurice 
Hewlett  was  employed  in  the  Record  Office,  as 
Keeper  of  Land  Revenue  Records  and  Enrollments, 
from  1896  to  1900.  During  those  four  years  he 
must  have  pored  over  many  time-stained  parch 
ments  written  in  the  centuries  that  have  passed 
since  William  the  Conqueror  ordered  the  census 
or  survey  of  England  known  as  Domesday  Book. 
In  those  four  years  he  garnered  from  the  original 
documents  his  love  for  the  Past. 
One  would  have  thought  that  this  dry-as-dust  oc 
cupation  would  have  stifled  the  poet  in  him.  Far 
from  it.  "Pan  and  the  Young  Shepherd,"  pub 
lished  in  1898,  has  in  it  the  steps  of  youth  and  the 
scents  of  spring.  It  is  as  fresh  as  a  May  morning. 
And  if  another  of  his  poems,  "The  Song  of  the 
Plough,"  is  more  sedate  (it  was  written  eighteen 
years  later),  yet  this,  too,  has  the  lilt  and  the  eager 
142 


Maurice     Hewlett  143 

look.     He,  himself,  has  the  look  of  a  man  who  has 
thought  hard  and  delved  deep,  who  with  the  pen 
has  trafficked  with  great  men  and  great  ladies,  and 
who  knows  the  Scandinavian  and  Icelandic  Sagas 
as  we  know  our  daily  newspapers.    An  intense  man, 
thin,  sturdy,  and  wiry;  energetic;  with  a  face  finely 
trained   and   somewhat   battered,  eyes  that  watch, 
lips  that  utter  quick,  incisive  comments.    A  fearless 
man!     Perhaps  that  is  well,  as  his  wife  was  the 
first  woman  aviator,  long  before  the  war  a  builder 
of  airplanes,  and  a  daring  and  skillful  flier. 
I  wonder  if  he  is  popular  today.     So  bright  and 
scholarly  a  writer,  so  full  a  mind,  should  have  a 
large    circle    of    readers.      Perhaps    his    mannered 
style  is  against  him  (I  like  it)   and  his  air  of  pa 
tronage  (I  like  that,  too).    "Here  am  I,"  he  seems 
to  be  saying.     "I   am  one  who  knows.     I   write 
what  I  like.     Take  it  or  leave  it." 
What  would  have  happened  had  not  Maurice  Hew 
lett  spent  four  years  in  the  Record  Office,  and  had 
he  not  buried  himself  in   the  Sagas?     Frankly,   I 
find  all  Sagas  a  bore,  and  so  do  most  reviewers  of 
his  latest  book,   "The  Outlaw."     It   is  the  fifth 
volume  of  Mr.  Hewlett's  "Sagas  Retold."     I  am 
unable  to  be  interested  in  these  huge,  monosyllabic 
heroes,  these  grown-up  dolls  of  Norway,  who  are 
always  fighting  about  something  that  is  not  worth 
fighting  about.     I  prefer  Ibsen's  people.     To  me 
Burgomaster  Solness  is  much  more  interesting  than 
Hr.izcnhead  the  Great.     I  like  his  novels  of  modern 
"The     Stooping    Lady,"    "Open     Country," 
"Rest  Harrow,"  because  I  like  a  personal  style  and  a 


144  Authors  and  I 

personal  outlook  and  attack,  even  if  the  style  has 
a  twist  of  the  archaic,  a  turn  for  inversion,  and  a 
brilliant  determination  to  be  unique.     His  modern 
novels  were  "out"  when  I  examined  the  Hewlett 
shelf  of  my  pet  New  York  Branch   Library,  but 
there  was  a  closely  packed  stack  of  the  others. 
"Maurice  Hewlett  doesn't  seem  to  be  very  popular," 
I  said  to  the  librarian. 
"No,"  she  answered,  "he's  too  fine." 
"Fine"  is  an  excellent  word  to  describe  this  excel 
lent  writer,  who  may  be  also  called  precious,  ex 
clusive,   and  certainly  "high-brow."     To  the   real 
reader    who    appreciates    style,    and    who    knows 
that   the  style   is   the   man,   certain   of   his   books 
are  a  delight.    Rarely  have  I  had  a  greater  literary 
pleasure  than  in  reading  his  "Earthwork  Out  of 
Tuscany,"  his  first  published  work,  "Little  Novels 
of  Italy,"  and  "The  Road  in  Tuscany."    I  know  no 
one  else  who  has  Italy  so  fervidly  and  so  delicately 
in  his  blood.     "Little  Novels  of  Italy"  is  a  book 
that  will  live.    The  episodes  have  a  charm,  pathos, 
and  a  gaiety  that  I  do  not  find  in  the  episodes  of 
his  "New  Canterbury  Tales."    His  brain  moved  to 
Chaucer's  England,  but  his  heart  speaks  in  Botti 
celli's  Italy. 

It  was  "The  Forest  Lovers"  that  made  him  famous, 
and  showed  the  world  that  a  new  writer  had  arisen 
who  counted.  I  have  just  reread  that  spirited 
romance,  and  find  it  as  enthralling  as  of  yore.  On 
the  second  page  he  springs  upon  his  high,  literary 
horse,  and  announces,  urbi  et  orbi,  the  Hewlettian 
viewpoint : 


Maurice     Hewlett  145 

I  rank  myself  with  the  historian  in  this  business  of  tale- 
telling,  and  consider  that  my  whole  affair  is  to  hunt  the 
argument  dispassionately.  Your  romancer  must  neither 
be  a  lover  of  his  heroine  nor  (as  the  fashion  now  sets) 
of  his  chief  rascal.  He  must  affect  a  genial  height,  that 
of  a  jigger  of  strings;  and  his  attitude  should  be  that  of 
the  Pulpiteer:  Heaven  help  you,  gentlemen,  but  I  know 
wh»t  is  best  for  you!  Leave  everything  to  me. 


There !  That  is  Maurice  Hewlett  to  the  life. 
He  wove  his  three  modern  romances  into  a  trilogy 
(trilogies  are  fashionable),  and  his  best  historical 
romances,  although  quite  dissimilar  in  theme  and 
period,  are  three — "The  Forest  Lovers,"  "Richard 
Yea-and-Nay,"  and  "The  Queen's  Quair,"  which 
is  dedicated  to  Andrew  Lang  "by  his  permission 
and  with  good  reason."  Lang,  also,  had  given  days 
and  nights  to  the  mystery  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots, 
she  who,  tossing  high  her  young  head,  cried,  "Let 
me  alone  to  rule  wild  Scotland." 
It  is  reported  that  a  Scotsman  after  reading  "The 
Queen's  Quair"  said,  "And  so  is  the  whole  lot 
of  jhem." 

King  Richard  Yea-and-Nay,  whom  we  know  as 
Richard  of  the  Lion  Heart,  but  here  portrayed  as 
"torn  by  two  natures,  cast  in  two  moulds,  sport 
of  two  fates,"  was  a  fine  Hewlett  subject.  It  is 
done  in  great  sweeps,  fierce  and  fine  in  places.  I 
prefer  "The  Forest  Lovers,"  but  I  like  him  best, 
I  delight  in  him  most,  when  Italy  is 'his  theme. 
Yes!  he  is  a  fine  writer,  .student,  romancist,  poet — 
a  man  who  keeps  his  youth  bravely.  I  had  hoped 
to  hear  that  he  had  been  made  Professor  of  Poetry 


146  Authors  and  I 

at  Oxford  University.  He  was  in  the  running ;  but 
the  post  was  given  to  another,  a  pity,  I  think,  for 
Maurice  Hewlett  is  a  poet  in  his  prose  as  well  as 
in  his  verse,  and  he  would  have  led  the  youth  of 
Oxford  into  delightful,  dainty,  dashing,  and  daring 
poetical  adventures. 


27.    JOHN  OLIVER  HOBBES 

WHEN  I  asked  the  girl  librarian  (girl  librari 
ans,  I  observe,  are  always  better  dressed  than 
men  librarians)  for  a  copy  of  the  life  of  John  Oliver 
Hobbes,  she  looked  blank  and  doubtful.  "Mrs. 
Craigie,"  I  added— "Pearl  Mary  Teresa  Craigie— 
you  know,  the  famous  novelist — American — who 
m?de  her  home  in  England." 

The  girl  librarian  glided  to  the  card  index  bureau 
and  hovered  over  Hobbes.  "We  have  some  of  her 
book*— 'Robert  Orange,'  'The  School  for  Saints/ 
The  Gods,  Some  Mortals  and  Lord  Wickenham,' 
but  no  Life.  I'm  sorry." 

I  was  sorry,  too,  and  somewhat  surprised.  Born 
in  Boston  and  taken  to  England  by  her  parents  at 
an  early  age,  there  becoming  famous  as  novelist, 
playwright,  essayist,  and  one  of  the  wittiest  and 
most  accomplished  women  in  London,  surely  her 
Life  should  be  among  the  books  in  an  important 
branch  public  library  of  New  York.  To  me  it  did 
not  matter,  for  I  knew  that  clever,  charming  and 
witty  lady  well,  and  can  write  about  her  without 
opening  a  book. 

About  1890,  Mr.  Fisher  Unwin,  eager  to  enliven 
publishing  routine,  determined  to  issue  the  Pseudo 
nym  Library.  He  had  this  literary  adventure,  in 
the  way  of  publishers,  whispered  through  the  press, 
M7 


148  Authors  and  I 

and  he  placed  the  arrangements  for  the  Psuedonym 
series  in  the  hands  of  one  of  his  clever  readers  (a 
"reader"  is  one  who  reads  and  reports  upon  manu 
scripts),  Mr.  Edward  Garnett.  This  able  literary 
critic,  whose  wife  is  the  translator  of  Turgueneff, 
has  a  keen  sense  for  the  new  note,  and  new  talent. 
So  when  among  the  many  manuscripts  sent  in,  he 
one  day  picked  from  the  pile  and  tasted  "Some 
Emotions  and  a  Moral,"  by  John  Oliver  Hobbes,  he 
knew  at  once  he  had  found  the  book  that,  in  every 
way,  was  suitable  to  inaugurate  the  Pseudonym 
Library.  Mr.  Garnett  has  since  told  me  that  he 
was  first  attracted  by  the  handwriting.  It  was  very 
small,  very  neat,  very  firm  (those  were  the  days  be 
fore  typewritten  manuscript)  original  and  confident, 
as  if  saying,  "I  am  in  a  different  class  from  ordinary 
writers";  and  it  was  written  in  violet  ink  upon 
thick  cream-laid  paper.  Pearl  Craigie  was  a  wise  as 
well  as  a  witty  woman.  She  made  plans.  She 
left  nothing  to  chance. 

"Some  Emotions  and  a  Moral"  had  an  instant 
success.  It  was  short;  it  could  be  read  at  a  sitting; 
the  story  was  rapid  and  amusing;  cynical  yet  kindly; 
well  expressed ;  and  obviously,  John  Oliver  Hobbes, 
whoever  he  was,  could  write,  was  a  scholar,  and  a 
linguist,  and  had  a  quick  eye  for  the  fancies  and 
foibles  of  London  society.  This  first  book  was  as 
unlike  George  Eliot's  first  book  as  any  book  could 
be.  The  only  resemblance  between  them  was  that 
each  author  had  chosen  a  male  pseudonym,  and  each 
had  immediate  success.  George  Eliot  was  a  recluse, 
John  Oliver  Hobbes  was  a  mondaine:  George  Eliot 


John  Oliver  Hobbes  149 

never  thought  that  she  was  a  mondaine;  John 
Oliver  Hobbes  sometimes  thought  that  she  was  a 
recluse. 

"Some  Emotions  and  a  Moral"  was  not  a  great 
book,  but  it  was  vastly  entertaining.  It  cheered 
people:  it  made  the  idle  rich  feel  that  they  were 
intellectual  and  rather  uncommon ;  it  made  the 
busy  intellectuals  feel  that,  with  luck,  life  might 
become  more  engaging  than  books. 
Easily  I  fell  a  victim  to  the  swift  charm  of  "Some 
Emotions  and  a  Moral"  (I  have  quite  forgotten 
now  what  it  was  all  about)  ;  I  provided  elderly 
ladies  with  copies,  and  they  asked  me  to  dinner  in 
requital  for  the  pleasure  the  book  had  given  them. 
One  day  I  said  to  myself,  "I  must  know  this  John 
Oliver  Hobbes."  So  I  addressed  a  letter  to  him 
care  of  his  publishers,  expressing  my  admiration, 
and  saying  how  much  I  should  enjoy  meeting  John 
Oliver  Hobbes.  The  reply,  to  my  astonishment, 
came  from  Pearl  Mary  Teresa  Craigie,  then  24 
years  of  age:  the  letter  was  sent  from  her  father's 
home  in  Lancaster  Gate.  He  was  John  Morgan 
Richards,  a  leader  of  "The  American  Society"  in 
London,  one  of  the  finest  types  of  American  gentle 
men  I  have  met,  and  a  man  of  ideas  and  action 
who  revolutionised  the  art,  or  business,  or  eyesore, 
whichever  you  like  to  call  it,  of  advertising  in  Eng 
land.  His  wife,  Laura  Richards,  was  a  woman  of 
genius  who  expressed  herself  amazingly — not  in 
book  or  pictures,  in  everyday  life. 
It  was  to  her  father's  house  that  I  was  invited  to 
tea  by  Pearl  Craigie.  She  had  been  married  at  19 ; 


150  Authors  and  I 

it  was  an  unhappy  marriage.  After  much  study 
and  preparation  she  had  launched  her  first  book, 
and  found  herself  famous  in  society  and  in  literary 
circles.  Our  friendship  began  that  day  and  con 
tinued.  She  had,  I  think,  as  quick  and  lively  a 
mind  as  any  woman  I  have  ever  met.  She  sparkled 
in  conversation;  her  brown,  lustrous  eyes  would 
dance  with  merriment  when  she  had  said  something 
or  seen  something  that  roused  her  irony,  her  com 
passion  or  her  ire.  Her  father's  house  became  a 
centre  of  literary  and  social  hospitality :  at  luncheon 
and  dinner  parties,  with  covers  often  laid  for  twen 
ty,  you  met  all  kinds  of  eminent  people,  and  you  met 
them  again  at  his  country  place,  first  Norris  Castle, 
and  later  Steephill  Castle  in  the  Isle  of  Wight. 
The  centre  of  every  function  was  this  brilliant 
young  American  woman,  whom  her  father  idolised, 
and  whose  quick  mind  and  historical  knowledge 
worked  in  public  affairs  as  eagerly  as  in  literature. 
It  was  an  open  secret  that  her  counsels  were  sought 
by  more  than  one  eminent  statesman.  She  was 
also  intimately  interested  in  religion,  philosophy, 
and  music.  The  literary  world  was  astonished  one 
day  to  find  in  the  Sunday  Sun  a  whole  page 
review  by  John  Oliver  Hobbes  of  Arthur  Balfour's 
"Foundations  of  Religious  Belief."  As  to  music 
I  remember  one  evening  in  her  drawing-room  the 
conversation  turned  upon  the  acting  of  prima 
donnas.  Mrs.  Craigie  was  amusing  on  the  subject, 
and  finally  she  took  the  centre  of  the  room  and 
regaled  us  with  a  series  of  parodies  of  great  singers 
who  attempt  to  act  in  opera.  She  continued  for 


John  Oliver  Hobbes  151 

an  hour  singing  and  acting,  familiar  with  the 
music,  familiar  with  the  ways  of  prima  donnas. 
It  will  be  observed  that  I  have  wandered  from  John 
Oliver  Hobbes  as  writer  to  Mrs.  Craigie  as  woman 
in  the  limelight.  She  filled  each  role  with  spirit 
and  success;  but  as  writer  she  never  reached  the 
first  rank.  I  think  she  realised  this.  She  had 
almost  every  gift  except  the  supreme  gift  of  genius. 
She  was  not  a  George  Eliot,  and  she  lacked  the 
human  sympathy  of  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward.  Bril 
liant,  metallic,  artificially  elegant  and  smart  are 
the  words  that  rise  to  my  lips  when  I  re-read  the 
novels  and  plays  of  John  Oliver  Hobbes.  Her 
brilliant  mind  wrote  because  writing  was  the  career 
that  she  had  chosen,  and  in  which  she  meant  to 
succeed. 

The  real  expression  of  her  talent  was  "Some  Emo 
tions  and  a  Moral"  and  the  small  books  in  the 
same  genre  that  followed  it — "The  Sinner's 
Comedy,"  "A  Study  in  Temptations,"  and  so  forth. 
Her  longer  books,  the  large  canvasses,  such  as 
"The  School  for  Saints,"  and  "The  Gods,  Some 
Mortals,  and  Lord  Wickenham,"  although  done 
with  great  care  and  art,  and  packed  with  good 
things,  somehow  always  fell  short  of  the  best,  as 
did  her  plays.  She  never  wrote  a  slovenly  page; 
she  put  her  best  into  everything — and  yet,  and 
yet! 

She  was  the  best  dressed  woman  in  London,  and  at 
a  dinner  party  with  a  congenial  companion,  she 
was  unparalleled.  The  dialogue  in  her  books 
was  quick  and  epigrammatic:  her  talk  was  better. 


28.     THE  HOUSMANS 

THERE  are  two  Housmans  as  you  know:  there 
is  Alfred  Edward,  and  there  is  Laurence. 
Perhaps  you  have  heard  Laurence  lecture  in  an 
American  city :  you  may  have  heard  Alfred  Edward 
lecture  at  University  College,  London,  or  at  Cam 
bridge;  but  that  is  not  likely,  as  his  subject  is 
Latin,  and  much  as  you  may  enjoy  the  tongue  that 
Virgil  spake,  it  is  improbable  that  you  would 
choose  to  spend  an  afternoon  listening  to  a  Pro 
fessor  of  Latin.  Yet  your  curiosity  to  see  the 
author  of  "A  Shropshire  Lad"  may  have  been  so 
great  that  you  were  willing  to  smuggle  yourself 
as  a  student  into  a  Cambridge  or  London  class 
room  to  listen  to  a  lecture  on  Latin. 
A.  E.  Housman  is  a  one-book  man.  Laurence 
Housman  has  written  many  volumes. 
When  I  call  A.  E.  Housman  a  one-book  man  I 
am  thinking  of  him  as  the  author  of  "A  Shropshire 
Lad";  for  though  they  may  be  tremendously  im 
portant,  neither  I  nor  you,  reader,  is  habitually 
interested  in  his  other  productions,  say,  "Manilius," 
Book  I,  edited  1903;  Book  II,  1912;  Book  III, 
1916;  and  "Juvenal,"  edited  1905. 
But  everybody  who  cares  anything  for  poetry  is 
interested  in  "A  Shropshire  Lad."  This  little 
volume  of  96  pages  was  published  in  1896,  and,  if 
152 


The  Housmans  153 

the  author  of  it  cares  about  fame,  he  has  the  satis 
faction  or  amusement  of  knowing  that  this  little 
volume  has  made  him  famous.  A  score  of  times 
during  the  twenty-four  years  that  have  elapsed 
since  it  was  first  published,  I  have  met  men  and 
women  who  knew  it,  who  could  quote  from  it, 
and  who  always  expressed  surprise  that  the  author 
had  written  no  other  books.  (They  don't  call  his 
Latin  editions — books.) 

It  has  been  my  habit  to  explain  to  some  would- 
be  Housmanites  that  A.  E.'s  attitude  toward 
literature  is  consistent,  understandable,  and  admir 
able.  The  making  of  the  poems  in  "A  Shropshire 
Lad"  filled  his  life,  and  occupied  his  thought  until 
he  was  well  on  in  the  thirties,  and  an  equal  period 
may  elapse  before  he  is  ready  to  publish  a  second 
volume.  His  well-balanced  mind,  caustic  and 
cynical  wit,  and  classical  training,  urge  withdrawal 
from  the  literary  arena  until  he  is  quite  convinced 
that  his  second  book  is  as  austerely  and  funda 
mentally  himself  as  his  first  effort.  This  eminent 
Cambridge  don,  Professor  of  Latin  and  Fellow  of 
Trinity,  lives  in  a  hesitant  environment,  and  for 
better  or  worse  lacks  the  "go-in-and-win-my-boy" 
confidence  of  a  Richard  Harding  Davis. 
Laurence  Housman  has  a  great  admiration  for  his 
elder  brother,  and  during  his  recent  visit  to  Amer 
ica  allowed  himself  to  be  interviewed  by  a  repre 
sentative  of  the  Evening  Post  on  the  Housman 
family  in  general,  and  on  A.  E.  in  particular.  I 
am  afraid  that  the  headlines  of  the  interview,  run 
ning  right  across  the  page,  rather  startled  A.  E.  in 


154  Authors  and  I 

"the  scholastic  seclusion  of  Cambridge."  I  copy 
them  out. 

"The  Famous  'Shropshire  Lad'  and  His  Brother. 
"Years  Ago  A.   E.   Housman  Created  a   Master 
piece. 

"Since  Then  He  Has  Been  Silent. 
"Now  Laurence  Housman  Tells  Us  About  Him. 
"And  of  His  Own  Adventures  Among  American 
Poets." 

I  can  imagine  A.  E.  saying  when  he  reads  these 
headlines — "So  that  is  the  way  they  do  it  in  Amer 
ica.  How  curious!" 

The  interview  is  excellent  and  informative.  We 
are  told  that  it  was  dislike  of  anti-climax  that 
prevented  A.  E.  from  publishing  more  poems  after 
"A  Shropshire  Lad."  It  was  "too  successful." 
He  was  besieged  with  offers  for  his  next  book 
(publishers  are  awful).  To  the  most  importunate 
of  them  his  answer  was:  "This  volume  was  thirty- 
five  years  in  the  making;  I  shall  write  the  next  just 
as  slowly."  And  he  allowed  himself  to  give  the 
following  definition  of  the  writing  of  verse: 
"Poetry  is  something  that  gives  one  a  strange  sen 
sation  in  the  back  of  the  neck,  or  down  the  spine, 
or  a  funny  feeling  in  the  pit  of  the  stomach." 
He  is  a  strange  figure,  we  are  further  informed, 
retired  largely  into  himself.  In  the  last  two  decades 
he  has  written  from  400  to  500  lines  of  poetry, 
every  line  chiselled  and  polished,  but  up  to  the 
present  only  one  of  these  poems  has  appeared  in 
print. 
So  his  admirers  must  for  the  present  content  them- 


The  Hottsmans  155 

selves  with  re-reading  "A  Shropshire  Lad."  I 
have  just  done  so.  For  the  past  week  I  have 
carried  the  little  volume  about  in  my  pocket,  dipping 
into  it  all  times,  re-reading  it  until  I  know  almost 
by  heart  many  of  the  grim,  sad,  ironical,  cynical, 
tender,  clear-cut  little  poems.  It  is  the  most  un 
affected  of  books.  It  is  absolutely  without  pose 
or  artifice,  yet  you  feel  that  it  has  been  wrought 
upon  until  simplicity  can  be  no  longer  simplified. 
The  attitude  of  this  Shropshire  lad  is  akin  to  that 
of  Thomas  Hardy  in  many  of  his  poems.  They 
might  be  brothers  in  spirit.  If  A.  E.  is  directer 
than  T.  H.  he  is  quite  as  morose.  The  burden  of 
the  world  is  lyrically  heavy  on  each.  A.  E.  can 
never  enjoy  the  present  moment  because  he  is 
always  looking  before  and  after. 
When  this  Shropshire  lad  (you  get  to  know  him 
very  well  through  these  poems)  went  to  London 
his  thoughts  in  the  train  were  all  of  the  past, 
never  the  future.  He  always  uses  the  right  word, 
the  neat  word;  and  the  thought  is  always  clear 
and  candid,  but  never  joyful. 

Laurence  Housman  is  more  a  man  of  the  world. 
He  is  keener  in  getting  wrongs  righted  than  in  the 
accuracy  of  Latin  texts;  in  the  equalisation  of  the 
franchise  than  emendations  of  Juvenal.  His 
interests  are  many — playwriting,  fiction,  art,  crafts 
manship,  poetry,  woodcuts,  fair)'  tales.  He  has 
published  many  books,  and  I  suppose  that  the  most 
popular,  the  most  successful  was  "An  English 
woman's  Love  Letters,"  issued  anonymously  in 
1900.  This  sensitive  and  sentimental  book  led  the 


156  Authors  and  I 

critics  a  pretty  dance.  For  weeks  guesses  at  the 
authorship  were  made  in  the  literary  journals,  and 
all  sorts  of  people  had  to  deny  that  they  had 
written  "An  Englishwoman's  Love  Letters."  Then 
one  day  a  student  of  modern  belles  lettres  brought 
into  the  Academy  office  an  article  proving,  through 
citations  from  other  books  by  Laurence  Housman, 
that  he  was  the  author  of  the  confessions  of  this 
love-hipped  Englishwoman.  That  ended  the  quest, 
Laurence  now  acknowledges  the  authorship  of  this 
pretty  book.  He  did  not  conceal  that  he  was  the 
author  of  "Rue." 

Very  many  people  in  England  and  America  are 
grateful  to  him  for  that  delightful  play  "Prunella, 
or  Love  in  a  Dutch  Garden."  I  cherish  a  moving 
memory  of  his  "Bethlehem:  A  Nativity  Play," 
and  I  have  just  read  his  "King  John  of  Jingalo." 
About  this  I  feel,  as  I  feel  about  other  of  his 
books,  and  about  his  poetry  and  illustrations.  It 
is  on  the  threshold  of  being  a  fine  book  but  it 
does  not  quite  succeed  in  being  one.  As  to  "The 
Sheepfold"  a  curious  experiment  in  biography,  it 
would  have  been  better  if  fiercely  pruned  to  half 
the  length.  It  is  in  him,  I  believe,  to  write  a  great 
book. 

Meanwhile  he  has  done  a  service  to  letters  by 
reminding  a  busy  world  of  A.  E.  and  incidentally 
of  himself. 

Laurence  has  strong  views  about  American  Free 
dom,  and  American  Poetry,  and  is  fearless  and 
polite  in  expressing  them. 


29.     WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS 

MY  early  reading  of  Howells  (it  began  quarter 
of  a  century  ago)  had  a  curious  effect.  I 
imagined  that  all  American  men  and  women  had 
the  subtlety  of  insight,  the  delicacy  of  perception, 
and  the  beautiful  manners  of  the  ladies  and  gentle 
men  in  the  novels  of  Mr.  Howells.  I  held  that 
idea  until  my  first  visit  to  the  United  States,  and 
really  it  persists  a  little  still.  I  am  always  expect 
ing  to  meet  a  Kitty  Ellison  or  a  Lydia  Blood,  and 
young  men  whose  one  desire  in  life  is  to  be  gentle 
and  sympathetic  to  young  ladies.  And  when  I  was 
told  that  Mr.  Howells  was  raised  in  Hamilton, 
Butler  County,  Ohio,  that  as  a  boy  he  set  type  in 
a  remote  newspaper  office,  and  worked  his  way  up 
through  rough-and-tumble  journalism,  I  pictured 
him — supposing  Ohio  to  be  in  the  wild — I  pictured 
him  as  a  sort  of  Buffalo  Bill,  a  lion  among  ladies, 
with  a  big,  soft  heart,  a  sombrero  hat,  and  an 
amazing  power  of  divining  the  antecedental  epi 
sodes  of  a  proposal.  Years  afterward,  when  I 
met  him  in  New  York,  I  found  him,  well,  you 
know — a  quiet,  kindly,  and  observant  gentleman, 
sanely  and  sweetly  interested  in  the  respectable  side 
of  life,  and  I  wanted  to  say  to  him,  "Dear  Mr. 
Howells,  do  you  really  think  that  people  have  the 
"57 


158  Authors  and  I 

abnormal   intuitions   that  you   ascribe  to  them   in 
your  books?" 

I  have  just,  after  a  quarter  of  a  century,  re-read  "A 
Chance  Acquaintance"  and  "The  Lady  of  the 
Aroostook."  I  went  through  them  with  immense, 
quiet  pleasure  and  immense  astonishment — pleasure 
in  the  rippling  gaiety  of  the  stories;  astonishment 
at  their  finished  art  and  understanding.  The  char 
acterisation  is  as  direct  as  a  primitive  picture;  the 
humour  is  as  fresh  as  a  drawing  by  George  du 
Maurier.  I  prefer  him  to  Henry  James,  I  prefer 
him  to  Anthony  Trollope.  His  girls  are  adorable, 
his  middle-aged  ladies  are  witty,  his  middle-aged 
men  accept  their  destiny  cheerfully,  and,  oh !  wrhat 
a  relief  it  is  to  read  a  mild  teacup  Howells  novel, 
after  the  tempest  flagons  of  modern  fiction. 
I  freely  admit  that  the  Howells  young  men  are 
unlike  the  doughboys  who  marched  down  Fifth 
Avenue  behind  General  Pershing.  Mr.  Howells' 
young  men  would  never  sing,  "The  Gang's  All 
Here."  One  of  them,  a  man  of  fashion,  a  club 
man,  calls  another  clubman  in  friendly  conversation 
"a  goose,"  and  this  is  how  Staniford  explains  him 
self  to  Dunham  in  "The  Lady  of  the  Aroostook": 
"I  can't  turn  my  mind  to  any  one  thing — I'm  too 
universally  gifted.  I  paint  a  little,  I  model  a 
little,  I  play  a  very  little  indeed;  I  can  write  a 
book  notice.  The  ladies  praise  my  art,  etc."  Per 
haps  young  Americans  did  talk  like  that  in  the 
heyday  of  Victoria.  Readily  I  accept  it  from  the 
au'chor  who  once  wrote:  "Oh,  human  life,  how 


William  Dean  Howells  159 

I  have  loved  you!  and  would  I  could  express  all 
I  see  in  your  poor  foolish  face." 
But  I  owe  William  Dean  Howells  a  further  debt. 
He  has  given  flesh  and  blood,  and  dear  human 
frailties  to  the  Brahmins  of  Boston.  Under  his 
pen  they  become  human  beings,  not  mere  Proper 
Names  in  the  Century  Dictionary:  mere  catalogues 
of  perfected  deeds.  When  I  pick  up  his  "Literary 
Friends  and  Acquaintances,"  published  in  1901,  I 
see  and  listen  to  Emerson,  Lowell,  Hawthorne, 
Thoreau,  Holmes,  Longfellow,  Whittier,  Mrs. 
Stowe,  Harriet  Prescott  Spofiford,  Bayard  Taylor, 
Motley,  Parkman,  Norton,  Higginson,  Dana,  and 
Channing.  I  hear  Emerson  say  that  John  Brown 
had  made  the  gallows  glorious  like  the  cross;  that 
Hawthorne's  "Marble  Faun,"  is  "a  mush,"  and  that 
Poe  was  "the  jingle  man."  Howells  at  23  won 
the  affection  of  Hawthorne  thus:  the  author  of  the 
"Marble  Faun"  had  been  saying  that  Thoreau 
prided  himself  on  coming  nearer  the  heart  of  a  pine 
tree  than  any  other  human  being.  To  which 
young  Howells  replied,  "I  would  rather  come  near 
the  heart  of  a  man."  I  hear  Holmes  say,  "Haw 
thorne  is  like  a  dim  room  with  a  little  taper  of 
personality  burning  on  the  corner  of  the  mantel," 
and  I  seem  to  be  present  at  that  dinner  party  when 
"Holmes  sparkled  and  Lowell  glowed,  and  Agassiz 
beamed"  and  Howells  listened.  I  hear  Lowell 
saying  to  him,  "Sweat  the  Heine  out  of  you,"  and 
I  sec  the  card  of  introduction  to  Emerson  that 
Hawthorne  handed  to  Howells.  On  it  he  had 
written,  "I  find  this  young  man  worthy." 


160  Authors  and  I 

Well,  it  is  a  great  life  if  you  don't  weaken.  Wil 
liam  Dean  Howells  of  Ohio,  Boston,  and  the 
world  never  weakened.  He  passed  on  in  harness, 
watching  with  shrewd,  glimmering  eyes  the  America 
of  his  day  passing  away. 


30.     HENRY  JAMES 

I  WAS  never  a  Henry  James  man.  Admiration 
— yes:  perhaps  even  reverence;  but,  to  be 
frank,  for  years  I  have  not  had  the  patience  to  read 
him.  The  day  is  short,  and  to  peruse  a  Henry 
James  novel  properly  would  take  the  leisure  hours 
of  a  week.  Would  it  be  worth  while?  What  has 
happened  when  his  long,  involved  tale  is  told? 
Am  I  any  the  wiser  or  better?  Have  I  been 
amused  or  edified?  Has  anything  been  added  to 
my  life?  In  reading  a  novel,  say,  like  Herges- 
heimer's  "Java  Head,"  I  get  something — a  place, 
an  epoch,  the  customs  of  a  time,  but  most  of  Henry 
James'  novels  give  me  only  an  aroma  of  genteel 
society,  of  people  who  have  analysed  their  feelings 
to  such  an  extent  that  they  have  no  feelings  left, 
and  a  style  sometimes  exquisite,  always  sensitive, 
but  so  involved  and  long-drawn-out  that  at  the 
end  of  a  chapter  I  say  to  myself,  "Why  am  I 
reading  this?  Why,  why,  why?" 
Of  course,  there  arc  stories  by  him  that  set  his 
fame  and  can  never  be  forgotten.  I  am  their  great 
admirer.  There  was  "Daisy  Miller"  and  "Rod 
erick  Hudson"  and  "Washington  Square"  and 
"The  Portrait  of  a  Lady"  and  essays  on  certain 
artists  with  whom  he  was  in  sympathy,  and  every 
thing  he  wrote  about  Venice.  Sometimes  I  think 


1 62  Authors  and  I 

that  the  most  beautiful  work  he  did  was  about 
Venice — sad,  meditative  essays,  wistful  and  wan 
tonly  wayward,  but  so  beautiful. 
Henry  James  was  never  a  popular  author.  No 
book  of  his  reached  the  best  selling  list,  but  he 
always  had  his  few  and  extremely  ardent  admirers. 
Henry  Harland  was  one  of  them.  It  was  at  his 
fiat  in  Cromwell  Road  in  the  nineties  that  I  first 
met  Henry  James.  Even  then  he  was  a  lion,  an 
acquiescent  Old  Master  among  the  living.  He 
paced  the  room,  ponderously  complacent,  with  his 
air  of  determined  hesitation,  and  the  young  writers 
gathered  there  gave  him  homage  and  waited  for 
his  words.  It  was  the  thing  to  do.  It  was  always 
the  thing  to  do.  I  can  never  remember  the  time 
when  Henry  James  was  not  a  Feature  and  a  Figure 
in  London  life.  He  stood  apart.  He  was  Henry 
James,  and  whether  you  read  him  or  not  there  he 
was — Henry  James. 

This  lover  of  England  and  English  ways  found  the 
exact  spot  in  the  world  that  suited  him,  that  might 
have  been  made  for  him.  It  was  Lamb  House, 
a  Georgian  dwelling,  at  the  top  of  one  of  the  twisty 
streets  of  Rye  in  Sussex,  perched  above  the  marshes 
and  the  sea,  a  jewel  set  in  the  plain,  as  Coventry 
Patmore  called  it,  with  its  sister  town,  ancient 
Winchelsea,  also  on  its  hill  three  miles  away.  He 
would  receive  chance  guests  with  a  courtesy  and 
kindness  that  erred  only  on  the  side  of  a  massive 
cordiality  that  made  many  of  his  guests  speechless. 
They  did  not  know  where  to  look,  or  what  to  do, 
when  he  was  seeking  the  right  word  in  a  sentence 


Henry  James  163 

from  which  you  had  long  given  up  all  hope  that 
he  would  ever  recover  the  verb. 
At  Lamb  House  he  suffered  me  gladly  on  several 
occasions.  Year  after  year  it  was  my  custom  to 
spend  a  portion  of  the  summer  at  Winchelsea,  and 
what  was  pleasanter  than  to  cycle  over  to  Rye 
with  a  few  friends,  and  call  upon  Henry  James. 
The  telephone  had  not  penetrated  to  Winchelsea, 
and  I  cannot  imagine  Henry  James  using  it, 
although  he  did  essay,  with  gravity  and  dignity, 
to  ride  the  bicycle.  His  partiality  for  it  was 
brief. 

Our  visits  were  prefaced  by  a  polite  letter,  and  a 
politer  answer.  The  ritual  of  the  adventure  was 
always  exact.  Each  episode,  each  afternoon  was  the 
same.  I  see  again  the  stocky,  impressive  figure, 
with  large  head  and  the  observant  eyes,  advancing 
with  outstretched  hand  into  the  cool  hall,  from  the 
garden  study,  a  book  under  his  arm,  usually  French. 
This  would  be  followed  by  a  stroll  round  the  trim 
lawn,  a  disquisition,  uneasily  accurate,  on  the 
flowers  and  the  views,  followed  by  a  set  tea  at  a 
table  perfectly  arranged.  Our  host,  if  the  company 
was  sympathetic,  would  talk  slowly,  laboriously, 
delicately,  with  swift,  ponderable  efforts  of  humour, 
embracing  all  in  the  conversation,  and  startling  the 
timid  when  he  directed  toward  them  a  question  or 
a  comment.  Sometimes  there  was  a  pause  in  the 
conversation.  When  this  happened  the  pause  could 
be  felt.  On  such  occasions  I  would  try  to  save  the 
situation.  Once,  during  a  pause  longer  than  usual, 
in  despair,  I  praised  the  canary.  For  some  seconds 


164  Authors  and  I 

Henry  James  gave  the  bird  his  undivided  attention, 
then  he  said — "Yes,  yes,  and  the  little  creature 
sings  his  songs  of  gratitude  and  admiration  with-er 
— the  slightest  modicum  of  encouragement  from-er 
—me." 

If  I  say  more  about  Henry  James  as  a  Man  than 
as  a  Writer  it  is  because  he  impressed  me  more 
as  a  Man  than  as  a  Writer. 

The  Man  grew  greater  as  he  grew  older.  I  saw 
him  several  times  in  the  early  months  of  the  war, 
and  whenever  I  saw  him  I  thought  of  those  three 
pregnant  words  of  Shakespeare's:  "Ripeness  is  all." 
Ripe  was  the  word  for  him,  but  the  cataclysm  of 
the  war  and  all  it  meant  made  him  unutterably 
sad,  not  uselessly  sad,  far  from  it,  for  he  was 
ceaselessly  at  work  for  humanity.  He  went  no 
more  to  Rye:  he  spent  his  spare  time  visiting 
wounded  soldiers,  talking  to  them,  comforting 
them.  What  Tommy  thought  of  Henry  James 
and  of  his  talk  will  never  be  known,  but  Tommy 
knew  well  that  this  big,  distressed  man,  this  Great- 
heart,  felt  for  him  and  loved  him,  even  if  "the  old 
buffer"  was  unable  to  express  himself  in  Tommy's 
language.  This  all  happened  in  those  days,  those 
dire  days  when  England,  his  beloved  England,  had 
her  back  to  the  wall.  Then  it  was  that  he  became 
a  British  subject.  It  was,  as  he  said,  the  least 
that  he  could  do.  Then  it  was  that  he  produced 
a  phrase  of  five  words  that  are  perhaps  to  English 
men  the  best  known  and  the  most  cherished  among 
the  millions  of  words  that  he  wrote.  He  referred 
to  the  English  as  "that  decent  and  dauntless  race," 


Henry  James  165 

and  Englishmen  who  have  never  read  one  of  his 

books,  and  never  will,  are  proud  and  glad. 

On   Lamb   House,  Rye,  a  tablet  has  been  placed 

bearing  these  words:     "Henry  James  lived   here 

1898-1916." 

It  will  be  a  place  of  pilgrimage. 

What  would  he  have  said  if  he  could  have  known 

that,  of  all  his  books,  his  "Letters"  is  the  most 

popular  ? 


31.  RUDYARD  KIPLING 

IN    1889    we   in    London    who   were   living   by 
literary  journalism,  began  to  talk  with  awe  and 
wonder   about  a   new  Anglo-Indian    author   called 
Rudyard  Kipling,  whom  his  intimates  addressed  as 
Ruddy. 

My  friend  Vernon  Blackburn  got  to  know  him  and 
to  idolise  him;  and  it  was  through  Vernon  that  I 
began  to  hear  wonder  talk  about  Rudyard  Kipling. 
He  was  not  a  society  man,  or  a  frequenter  of  clubs: 
he  was  a  worker,  an  investigator  of  London  human 
ity,  like  O.  Henry  in  New  York,  a  prowler  about 
the  streets  who  would  copy  the  names  of  striking 
thoroughfares  in  his  note  book,  and  talk  to  anybody 
who  was  engaged  on  an  interesting  job.  He  was 
an  old  young  man,  who  checked  and  chided  Ver- 
non's  youthfulness.  Sometimes  Vernon  would  be 
admitted  into  the  Kipling  workshop.  He  told  me 
how  the  author  of  "Barrack  Room  Ballads"  would 
rush  to  the  window  when  a  soldier  passed  down  the 
street;  how  he  would  compose  stanzas  at  white 
heat,  one  after  the  other,  and  rush  upstairs  each 
time  to  read  the  new  effort  to  his  parents ;  and  how 
once  when  he  was  declaiming  "The  Blind  Bug" 
to  Vernon,  and  had  reached  the  line  "He  flipped 
the  blind  bug  into  the  dark"  he  suited  the  action  to 
the  word  so  vehemently  that  the  blood  spurted. 
1 66 


Rudyard  Kipling  167 

We  bought,  not  without  difficulty,  and  read  and 
re-read  those  collections  of  stories,   in  blue  paper 
covers,  with  the  imprint  of  an  Indian  publisher — 
"Soldiers  Three,"  "In  Black  and  White,"  "Under 
the  Deodars"  and  all  the  other  wonders  .of  ^prose 
and  verse.     For  a  poet,  too,  a  writer  of  swinging, 
haunting  verses,  who  used  slang  without  fear  and 
without    reproach,    was    this   young   Anglo-Indian 
who  took  young  literary  England  by  storm. 
The  dons  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  were  rather 
shy   of    Kipling,    but   the   undergraduates   opened 
their  Norfolk  jackets  to  him,  and  by  1890,  when 
he  published  "Life's  Handicap,"  and  in  1891,  "The 
Light  That  Failed,"  he  had  won  his  way  almost 
into   the    ranks   of   the   "best   sellers."      "Barrack 
Room  Ballads"  was  not  published  till   1892,  and 
by  that  time  even  the  Quarterly  Reviewers  were 
almost  ready  to  accept  his  violent  wayfaring  with 
the  tongue  that  Shakespeare  spake.    Of  course  when 
"Kim"  was  published  Kipling  became  a  classic. 
W.  E.  Henley  had  prepared  the  way  for  the  intro 
duction    of    "Barrack    Room    Ballads"    into    the 
fortresses  of  classicism  by  publishing  them  week  by 
week     in     the    Scots     Observer.     Henley,      being 
joint  author  with  Farmer  of  "The  Slang  Diction 
ary,"  was  of  course  vastly  interested  in  Kiplingese. 
Reading    the    proofs    in    the   office    of    the   Scots 
Observer    in    Westminster,    he    would    roar    with 
laughter    and    hammer   the    table   with    blows   of 
delight.      One   of    the    ballads   especially    pleased 
him.    Turning  to  me  he  said :   "Will  you  take  this 


1 68  Authors  and  I 

telegram  when  you  go?"  He  handed  it  to  me.  It 
contained  three  words:  "God  bless  you!" 
Parties  and  functions  are  not  for  Kipling.  He  is  no 
hermit,  but  his  friends  have  to  be  of  his  own 
choosing.  I  heard  about  the  oyster  supper  parties 
he  gave  when  he  was  living  in  one  of  the  dim  little 
streets  by  the  Thames  near  Charing  Cross,  and 
once  I  was  taken  by  Vernon  Blackburn  to  see 
him  in  the  house  that  his  father  had  rented  in  the 
Earl's  Court  Road.  It  was  a  Saturday  afternoon: 
he  was  at  work  before  a  roll-top  desk,  and  carved 
upon  it  (he  did  it  with  his  penknife)  wrere  the 
words,  "Oft  was  I  weary  when  I  toiled  at  thee." 
He  read  us  the  poem  he  was  then  writing.  No,  he 
did  not  write  it  out:  his  mouth  was  his  pen.  That 
has  always  been  his  way,  to  compose  a  poem  in  his 
head,  to  get  it  right  and  taut,  and  when  it  is  all 
done  to  copy  it  out  on  paper  in  his  clear,  small 
handwriting.  He  read  fiercely. 
The  next  time  I  saw  Rudyard  Kipling  was  under 
rather  shameful  circumstances  for  which  I  was  not 
responsible.  I  was  staying  at  Rottingdean,  a  sea 
side  place  in  Sussex,  and,  having  an  idle  hour, 
succumbed  to  the  blandishments  of  a  char-a-banc 
conductor  to  see  the  sights  of  the  neighbourhood. 
We  were  driven  past  the  village  green  and  pond, 
past  the  Burne-Jones  dwelling  to  a  white  house  in  a 
garden  surrounded  by  a  high  wall.  "Sight  No.  1," 
shouted  the  conductor.  "This  is  the  house  of  the 
celebrated  author,  Rudyard  Kipling."  The  con 
ductor  craned  his  neck,  rose  on  his  toes,  and  said, 
in  an  excited  voice,  "If  you  will  stand  up,  ladies  and 


Rudyard  Kipling  169 

gentlemen,  you  will  see  the  celebrated  author  in  a 
garden  hat,  just  entering  his  porch."  Can  you 
wonder  that  soon  afterward  Mr.  Kipling  moved 
from  Rottingdean  and  settled  in  a  delightful  old 
house  near  Burvvash,  in  Sussex,  where  there  are  no 
char-a-bancs  and  no  tourists. 

Once  more  I  saw  him — a  chance  encounter.  I  was 
cycling  from  Rottingdean  to  London,  and  in  a 
puncture  interval  at  a  wayside  blacksmith's  en 
countered  him  in  a  mess  of  grease  and  rags  assisting 
in  taking  a  motorcycle  to  pieces.  That  was  the 
mechanical  Kipling,  the  author  of  the  difficult-to- 
read  mechanical,  technical  stories. 
There  was  nothing  technical,  just  sheer  inspiration, 
in  the  article  that  appeared  in  the  London  Spec 
tator  describing  how  Shakespeare,  strolling  one 
afternoon  into  the  pit  of  the  Bankside  Theatre,  fell 
into  conversation  with  some  sailors,  plaited  hair 
and  rings  in  their  ears,  and  obtained  from  them  the 
seafaring  knowledge  that  he  used  in  "The  Tem 
pest."  The  article  was  unsigned.  We  wondered 
who  the  author  might  be ;  we  sought  in  vain.  Years 
later  an  American  publisher  issued  this  article  as 
a  pamphlet-de-luxe.  It  was  signed  Rudyard  Kip 
ling. 

And  there  was  nothing  technical  about  the  speech 
he  made  at  a  Royal  Academy  banquet,  one  of  his 
rare  appearances  in  public,  wherein  he  gave  an 
account  of  the  first  artist,  he  who  took  a  charred 
stick  from  the  fire  and  made  a  sketch  on  a  rock 
of  his  companions  bringing  home  a  deer.  "How 


170  Authors  and  I 

did  it  go?"  I  asked  a  Royal  Academician.  "Great!" 
he  answered.  "Great !  We  were  spellbound." 
It  is  a  chastened  Kipling  that  holds  our  attention 
in  "The  Years  Between,"  but  there  is  much  of  the 
old  fire  and  lilt,  and  more  of  the  fine  preacher 
quality  he  showed  in  "Recessional."  Who  can 
wonder  ? 

In  this  volume  he  returns  to  the  theme  which  he 
worked  so  beautifully  in  that  "Tempest"  article  in 
the  Spectator.  For  in  "The  Craftsman,"  a  poem 
of  seven  stanzas,  the  old  magic,  he  tells  how 
Shakespeare  garnered  the  material  for  his  craft — 

How,  while  he  hid  from  Sir  Thomas's  keepers, 
Crouched  in  a  ditch  and  drenched  by  the  midnight 
Dewe,  he  had  listened  to  gipsy  Juliet 

Rail  at  the  dawning. 

How  on  a  Sabbath,  hushed  and  compassionate — 
She  being  known  since  her  birth  to  the  townsfolk — 
Stratford  dredged  and  delivered  from  Avon 

Dripping  Ophelia. 

Book  after  book  by  him  appears.  They  may  vary 
in  interest:  they  may  be  different,  as  "Stalky"  is 
different  from  "Recessional";  but  in  each  and  all 
there  is  the  magic  that  starts  somewhere,  if  not 
everywhere,  in  everything  signed  Rudyard  Kipling. 


32.     ANDREW  LANG 

A  BOUT  the  autumn  of  1888,  two  young  men 
•*  *•  with  literary  ambitions  (my  friend  W.  Pett 
Ridge  was  one,  I  was  the  other)  put  their  excited 
heads  together,  and  determined  to  publish  a  book. 
The   volume  was  not  to  their   own   honour   and 
glory;   it   was   homage   to  Andrew   Lang,    to   his 
honour  and  glory.    The  "Languid  Lang,"  who  had 
a  consistent  sense  of  humour,  may  have  smiled  his 
weary  smile  at  the  notion.      I   know  not,   I   was 
much  too  far  advanced  in  awe  and  admiration  of 
him  to  inquire  if  he  considered  our  action  funny. 
Enthusiasm  begat  the  book,  the  enthusiasm  of  youth 
for  a  Master  of  their  trade  who  had  succeeded  so 
wonderfully   in   doing,    in   the  Daily  News,   what 
we  were  trying  falteringly  and  poorly  to  do — to 
write.     Those  were    the    days    when    the    Daily 
News  was  the  most  literary  of  the  London  journals. 
It  had  upon  its  staff  a  small  constellation  of  liter 
ary  stars,   including  Richard  Whiteing,  author  of 
"No.    5   John    St.";   but    the  brightest    star   was 
Andrew   Lang,    humourist   and   scholar,   humanist 
and  poet.    He  did  not  sign  his  editorials,  or  leaders 
as  they  are  called  in  England:  their  place  on  the 
editorial   page  was  third  or  fourth,  following  the 
nuisance  of  the  political,  economical,  or  sociological 
leaders.     He  always  wrote  on  literature  or  some- 
171 


I 7 2  Authors  and  I 

thing   allied;   but   whether   on   books,    folklore   or 
people,  on  fishing,  fal-fals  or  cricket,  his  leader  was 
always  graceful,  amusing,  and  clear  as  a  dewdrop: 
scholarly— but  the  learning  was  worn  lighter  than 
a  flower;  allusive— he  seemed  to  know  all  poetry, 
ancient  and  modern,  all  characters  in  fiction,  and 
all    about    fairies    and    heroes,    and    folklore,    and 
ballads.     Above  all,  his  leaders  had  humour  that 
bubbled  up  and  overflowed  from  every  subject  he 
played  with.    These  leaders  appeared  three  or  four 
times  a  week,  and  I  confess  that  my  first  employ 
ment  each  morning  was  to  search   for  the  Lang 
leader,  to  read  it  carefully  and  with  delight  in  the 
train  going  down  to  the  city,  to  cut  it  out,  and 
later  to  discuss  it  with  Pett  Ridge,  who  was  even 
more  of  a  Lang  enthusiast  than  I. 
One  day  we  had  the  daring  notion  of  collecting 
the  Lang  leaders,  retrieving  them  from  the  files  of 
the  Daily  News  and  of  writing  to  Mr.  Lang  and 
suggesting  that  they  should  be  published  under  the 
title  "Lost  Leaders."     Our  hero  agreed,  languidly, 
without  enthusiasm.     It  was  one  of  the  parlour 
poses  of  this  tall,  silent  aristocrat  of  letters,  with 
the  aquiline  features  and  the  wavy  locks  parted  in 
the  middle,  carefully  cut;  with  the  air  of  a  sensi 
tive  child  tossed  into  a  chilly  and  clamorous  world, 
that  nothing  was  worth  while,  that  everything  was 
rather  a  bore.     If  he  approved  of  our  enthusiasm 
he  certainly  never  showed  it. 

The  book  duly  appeared  under  the  title  "Lost 
Leaders,"  1889,  one  of  the  long  list  of  his  books. 
What  an  array!  There  were  at  least  sixty  begin- 


Andrew  Lang  173 

ning  with  "Ballads  and  Lyrics  of  Old  France"  in 
1872,  passing  through  "Ballads  in  Blue  China," 
1880,  "Custom  and  Myth,"  1884,  the  yearly  Fairy 
Books,  Blue,  Green,  and  Yellow,  the  translations 
of  the  "Iliad"  and  the  "Odyssey,"  Scottish  History, 
down  to  "The  World's  Desire"  in  collaboration 
with  Rider  Haggard,  another  novel  in  conjunction 
with  A.  E.  W.  Mason,  interspersed  with  heavier 
volumes  such  as  the  "Life  of  John  Gibson  Lock- 
hart,"  and  "The  Making  of  Religion."  Add  to 
these  more  books  of  verse  and  jeux  d'esprit  such 
as  "Pictures  at  Play,"  a  funny  running  comment 
on  the  Royal  Academy  exhibition  which  he  rattled 
off  through  a  few  May  afternoons  with  W.  E. 
Henley. 

All  these  by  no  means  represent  his  production; 
he  was  forever  writing  articles  and  causeries,  and 
there  were  the  lectures  he  gave  periodically  at  St. 
Andrew's  University  and  elsewhere.  He  spoke 
his  lectures  in  an  Oxford  drawl,  and  always  seemed 
a  little  surprised  when  he  made  his  audience 
laugh. 

A  great  worker:  yet  when  you  saw  him  dreaming 
through  long  summer  afternoons  at  Lord's  cricket 
ground,  or  doing  bad  rounds  on  the  golf  links, 
you  would  think  that  he  was  a  man  of  leisure 
instead  of  the  hardest  working  literary  journalist  of 
his  day.  That  he  was,  but  he  also  accomplished 
his  work  with  almost  incredible  ease,  always  pre 
tending  that  he  knew  very  little,  and  that  what  he 
did  know  was  hardly  worth  expressing.  He  never 


174  Authors  and  I 

relaxed  either  this  amusing  affection  or  his  indus 
try. 

I  am  told  that  he  was  beloved  by  his  intimates,  but 
to  the  casual  person,  eager  to  admire  him  in  draw 
ing  room  or  club,  he  was  distant  and  unresponsive. 
I  think  he  was  a  disappointed  man.  He  raised  high 
hopes  at  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  whither  he  went 
from  St.  Andrew's,  which  perhaps  were  never  ful 
filled.  Jowett  predicted  that  he  would  be  a  great 
poet,  and  it  is  said  that  he  hoped  his  poem,  "Helen 
of  Troy,"  published  in  1882,  would  "set  the  Thames 
on  fire."  It  did  not. 

But  the  poet  in  him  never  ceased.  He  produced 
verses  with  the  ease  that  he  produced  his  leaders 
and  literary  articles.  It  was  said  he  could  write 
an  article  so  quickly  that  if  he  began  it  standing  he 
would  finish  it  before  he  gave  himself  the  trouble 
of  sitting  down. 

Mr.  Edmund  Gosse,  who  in  his  "Portraits  and 
Sketches"  has  written  the  best  memory  of  "Dear 
Andrew  with  the  brindled  hair,"  as  R.  L.  Stevenson 
addressed  him  in  a  poem,  gives  us  an  example  of  his 
quickness.  One  day  Gosse  showed  him  Emerson's 
famous  epigram  called  "Brahma."  Lang,  who 
detested  Emerson  (I  don't  know  why)  read  it  with 
"a  snort  of  derision,"  and  immediately  improvised 
this  parody: 

If  the  wild  bowler  think  he  bowls, 
Or  if  the  batsman  thinks  he's  bowled, 
They  know  not,  poor  misguided  souls, 
They,  too,  shall  perish  unconsoled. 


Andrew  Lang  175 

I  am  the  batsman  and  the  bat, 

I  am  the  bowler  and  the  ball, 

The  umpire,  the  pavilion  cat, 

The  roller,  pitch,  and  stumps  and  all. 

This,  as  Mr.  Gossc  justly  remarks,  would  make  a 
pavilion  cat  laugh. 

Having  made  up  his  mind  that  he  was  not  to  be 
a  great  poet,  Lang  allowed  his  muse  to  be  merry, 
sad,  or  musical,  according  to  his  mood.  His  muse 
just  picks  up  her  skirts  and  trips  on. 

There's  a  joy  without  canker  or  cark, 
There's  a  pleasure  eternally  new, 
Tis  to  gloat  on  the  glaze  and  the  mark 
Of  china  that's  ancient  and  blue. 

He  can  laugh  whimsically  at  himself  as  in  the  lines 
he  addressed  to  Doris: 

Doris,  I,  as  you  may  know, 
Am  myself  a  Man  of  Letters, 
But  my  learned  volumes  go 
To  the  top  shelf  like  my  betters, 
High — so  high  that  Doris  could 
Scarce  get  at  them  if  she  would 

Doris,  there  be  books  of  mine, 
That  I  gave  you,  wrote  your  name  in. 
Tooled  and  gilded,  fair  and  fine: 
Don't  you  ever  peep  the  same  in? 
Yes,  I  see  you've  kept  them — but 
Doris,  they  are  "quite  uncut." 

His  fancy  played:  it  played,  and  yet  was  serious, 
with  everything  from  Folklore  to  Fishing,  from 
Custom  and  Myth  to  Cricket  and  Meters,  from 
Ariadne  to  annual  art  exhibitions.  One  of  his 


176  Authors  and  I 

funniest  smaller  books  was  "How  to  Fail  in  Liter 
ature."  He  told  the  beginner  exactly  how  to 
do  it. 

His  memory  was  amazing.  Not  even  Lamb  excels 
him  in  the  number  of  his  allusions.  Some  he 
worked  over  hard.  He  was  particularly  fond  of 
"wet,  bird  haunted  English  lawns,"  and  of 

Like  Dian's  kiss,  unasked,  unsought, 
Love  gives  itself,  but  is  not  bought 

He  was  Victorian  in  his  love  for  Morris'  "Earthly 
Paradise"  and  Rossetti's  "Poems,"  but  his  chief 
devotion  was  for  Matthew  Arnold.  There  was 
something  of  that  aloof  Olympian  in  Andrew  Lang: 
each  was  an  aristocrat  of  letters;  Lang's  tempera 
ment  was  sympathetic  to  the  undercurrent  of  sad 
wistfulness  that  runs  through  Matthew  Arnold's 
poems. 

One  of  his  books  that  will  surely  live  is  the  version 
in  English  of  the  "Odyssey"  he  made  with  Pro 
fessor  Butcher.  Not  long  ago  I  read  a  fine  essay 
by  a  soldier  inspired  by  "a  mildewed  Butcher  and 
Lang,"  which  had  been  read  and  re-read  by  exiles, 
tense  with  waiting,  in  a  Red  Cross  hut  at  Brest. 


33.    WILLIAM  J.  LOCKE 

I"  N  the  late  nineties  I  began  to  know  a  tall, 
•*•  graceful,  well-dressed  youth,  who  was  then 
Secretary  of  the  Royal  Institute  of  British  Archi 
tects.  It  was  in  the  Bodley  Head  Parlour,  in  1897, 
that  we  first  met.  This  fair  young  man  of  distin 
guished  appearance  wore  his  clothes  with  such  an  air 
that  I  was  inclined  to  cultivate  him.  He  was  W.  J. 
Locke;  he  had  just  published  "Derelicts,"  and  I  had 
not  read  it.  Such  things  happen.  Later  we  met 
at  teas  and  evening  parties,  and  I  remember  think 
ing  how  fortunate  the  Institute  was  in  having  a 
secretary  (most  secretaries  are  so  stuffy)  who  was 
a  man  of  the  world  with  charm,  tact,  and  a 
capacity  for  listening  as  well  as  for  talking.  He 
held  that  position  from  1897  to  1907,  cultivating 
literature  in  his  leisure  hours,  wooing  the  muse  so 
assiduously  that  within  this  period  he  published 
ten  novels.  His  first  book,  "At  the  Gate  of 
Samaria,"  goes  back  to  1895.  In  1906,  "The  Be 
loved  Vagabond"  was  issued.  With  this  book  he 
stepped  into  the  Locke  easy  stride,  or  perhaps  I 
should  say  the  Locke  gay  amble,  an  amble  that  his 
readers  find  so  pleasant  that  he  has  become  one  of 
the  most  popular  and  well-liked  novelists  of  the 
day.  So  successful  was  "The  Beloved  Vagabond" 
177 


178  Authors  and  I 

that  within  a  year  of  its  publication  he  took  his 
silk  hat  for  the  last  time  from  its  peg  in  the  office 
of  the  Royal  Institute  of  British  Architects,  and 
became  William  John  Locke,  novelist,  one  of  the 
few  graduates  (Mathematical  Tripos  1884)  of  St. 
John's  College,  Cambridge,  proposing  to  live  en 
tirely  by  the  pen. 

I* count  myself  a  Locke  man.  If  I  can't  borrow 
a  new  novel  by  him,  I  buy  it.  I  do  so  because  I 
know  that  I  shall  have  entertainment,  that  I  shall 
mix  with  people  of  breeding  whether  they  be  low 
born  or  high  born,  people  with  ideas  and  ideals, 
who  behave  themselves,  and  who  take  it  for  granted 
that  there  is  something  more  in  life  than  getting 
and  spending.  He  is  not  insular.  His  writings, 
like  those  of  Henry  Harland,  have  the  Gallic  touch 
and  esprit.  He  is  a  man  of  feeling,  his  books  are 
debonair,  and  if  he  deals  sometimes  with  sad  things, 
he  does  so  with  an  air,  showing  us  that,  as  in  life, 
they  pass;  and  that  good  may  issue  from  them. 
He  does  not  soar  to  heights  or  plunge  to  depths; 
he  is  a  cheerful  writer,  who  pursues  the  mot  juste 
with  a  lilt,  and  who  delights  to  turn  a  phrase 
happily.  Briefly;  his  novels  cheer  me,  and  he  has 
introduced  me  to  a  lot  of  agreeable,  lovable,  and 
fantastic  people.  I  do  not  pretend  to  remember 
them  all,  but  pleasant  hours  troop  back  when  I 
look  through  the  amusing  list  of  his  books  that 
his  publishers  (or  he)  designed  for  the  "By  the 
Same  Author"  page  in  "The  Red  Planet."  Here 
it  is: 


William  J.  Locke  179 

IDOLS 

JAFFERT 

VIVIETTB 

SEPTIMUS 

DERELICTS 

STELLA    MARIS 

THE   USURPER 

WHERE    LOV1    IS 

THE   WHITE   DOVE 

SIMON   THE   JESTER 

A  STUDY  IN  SHADOWS 

A  CHRISTMAS  MYSTERY 

THE    WONDERFUL     YEAR 

THE     FORTUNATE     YOUTH 

THE     BELOVED    VAGABOND 

AT  THE    GATE   OF   SAMARIA 

THE     GLORY    OF    CLEMENTINA 

THE   MORALS  OF  MARCUS  ORDEYNE 

THE   DEMAGOGUE   AND   LADY   PHAYRE 

JOYOUS  ADVENTURES  OF  ARISTIDE  PUJOL 

If  I  were  Mr.  Locke  I  would  warft  to  keep  the 
neat  pattern  of  this  design.  It  will  be  easy  to  find 
titles  longer  than  "Joyous  Adventures  of  Aristide 
Pujol" ;  it  will  not  be  so  easy  to  find  titles  shorter 
than  "Idols."  ...  I  have  been  thinking  hard,  and 
suggest— "Them,"  "You,"  "Oh,"  "I." 
Reading  one  of  Locke's  novel's,  "The  House  of, 
Baltasar"  in  a  train  and  enjoying  it,  I  was  arfnoyed 
by  the  efforts  of  a  Stranger  in  the  adjoining  chair 
(he  was  reading  Snaith's  "The  Undefeated")  to 
draw  me  into  a  conversation  on  the  relative  merits 
of  Locke  and  Snaith.  He  was  also  interested  in 
and  troubled  about  William  de  Morgan.  I 
snubbed  him,  I  wanted  to  read;  but  he  would  not 


180  Authors  and  I 

be  suppressed.  Presently  he  asked  me  where  I 
would  place  Locke  and  Snaith  in  regard  to  what 
he  called  "the  big  men."  He  was  so  persistent  and 
so  pleasant  that  I  finally  closed  "The  House  of 
Baltasar"  (it  wasn't  Locke's  fault),  and  answered 
him  something  in  this  wise — 
"If  we  agree,  and  I  suppose  we  do,  that  the  greatest 
modern  English-writing  novelists  are  Dickens, 
Thackeray,  Jane  Austen,  Charlotte  Bronte,  George 
Eliot,  Hawthorne,  Meredith,  and  Thomas  Hardy, 
then  we  have  a  clearly  defined  first  class.  That 
being  so,  I  should  place  Joseph  Conrad  in  the 
running  as  a  candidate  for  the  lower  ranks  of  the 
first  class,  not  there  yet,  but  promising.  Kipling  is 
also  a  candidate.  He  may  yet  write  another  "Kim." 
Midway  in  the  second  class,  perhaps  two-thirds 
down,  I  should  place  Locke  and  Snaith,  and,  some 
distance  below,  William  de  Morgan.  I  place  Con 
rad  high  because  he  is  a  master  of  style,  perhaps, 
after  Thomas  Hardy,  the  best  writer  of  English 
now  living.  I  place  William  de  Morgan  low  be 
cause  he  has  no  style  at  all.  He  was  a  voluminous 
and  volatile  letter  writer.  Locke  is  a  gay  and 
sensitive  stylist;  Snaith  is  impersonal,  clear,  and 
forcible." 

"What  I  want  in  my  fiction  reading,"  said  the 
Stranger,  "is  the  story;  I  don't  bother  about  style. 
William  de  Morgan  can  tell  a  story  fine.  He's  a 
bit  long-winded,  but  he  gets  there.  Did  you  ever 
see  William  de  Morgan  ?" 

"I  saw  him  once,"  I  answered.  "It  was  in  the 
second  year  of  the  war.  I  had  gone  into  an  iron- 


William  /.  Locke  181 

monger's  shop  in  Chelsea  to  buy  a  penknife.  While 
waiting  I  could  not  help  being  interested  in  a  vener 
able  but  rather  draggled  Early  Victorian — so  he 
looked — who  was  having  an  animated  discussion 
with  the  proprietor  of  the  shop.  The  assistant 
informed  me  that  the  old  gentleman  was  often 
there,  that  he  had  invented  a  device  for  locating 
submarines,  and  that  the  friendly  ironmonger  was 
helping  him  with  the  model.  Bits  of  metal  were 
scattered  over  the  counter. 
"Who  is  he?"  I  asked. 

"He's   rather   a   famous  old    bird,"   answered   the 
assistant.    "A  lot  of  eminent  men  live  in  Chelsea." 
"Indeed,  what's  his  name?" 

"He's   Mr.   William  de  Morgan  the  potter.     He 
writes  books,  too,  I'm  told." 
"That's  a  good  one,  Doctor,"  said  the  Stranger. 


34.     E.  V.  LUCAS 

YOU  owe  me,  my  dear  Lucas,  a  cab  fare.  When 
we  meet  in  London  after  your  journey  through 
India,  Japan  and  America,  I  will  claim  it. 
As  you  are,  besides  being  the  most  successful  liter 
ary  man  of  the  day  (I  don't  count  such  folk  as 
popular  novelists  and  playwrights),  a  person  with 
a  nice  sense  of  honour,  I  am  sure  you  will  indorse 
my  claim  to  that  cab  fare. 

Here  are  the  facts:  When  I  suddenly  decided  (was 
it  because  John  Galsworthy  dedicated  "A  Motley" 
to  you,  and  "Tatterdemalion"  to  Mrs.  Lucas?)  to 
write  about  you,  naturally  I  called  at  my  favourite 
branch  Public  Library. 

"Have  you  any  books  by  E.  V.  Lucas?"  I  asked. 
In  a  few  minutes  there  stood  upon  the  table  a  pile 
of  nineteen  volumes — all  for  me.  I  hailed  a  cab. 
There  was  no  other  way. 

On  consideration  I  do  not  think  that  I  will  charge 
you  for  the  cab  fare  because  of  the  pleasure  I 
enjoyed  in  going  through  nineteen  books  by  you. 
Most  of  them  were  familiar  to  me,  and  many  a  time 
I  laid  down  a  volume,  and  recalled  the  days  when  it 
was  written — back,  back  to  our  first  meeting.  That 
must  have  been  in  the  early  nineties,  soon  after 
you  had  settled  in  London  to  enroll  yourself  as  a 
student  at  University  College,  Gower  Street  You 
182 


E.  y.  Lucas  183 

were  always  a  writer,  always  making  mental  notes, 
always  observing,  and  even  in  those  days  you  held 
your  pen  askew,  your  half  pen,  for  you  always 
broke  the  holder  in  two  and  threw  away  the  upper 
half,  between  your  first  and  second  fingers;  and 
you  wrote,  oh  so  quickly,  with  the  lines  running 
up  the  page,  not  along  it,  in  little  words  minute  and 
so  difficult  to  read.  I  believe  you  still  dislike  the 
typewriter,  almost  as  much  as  you  detest  the  motor 
car. 

Even  in  those  days  your  humour,  always  a  little 
sardonic,  a  little  atrabilious,  began  to  spurt  forth, 
and  it  found  a  pertinent  and  impertinent  outvent 
in  the  "By  the  Way"  column  of  the  dear  old  pinky 
Globe  newspaper,  the  cradle  of  so  many  writers 
(including  myself)  who  "commenced  author"  by 
writing  "Turnovers"  (so-called  because  they 
turned  over  the  page)  at  a  guinea  a  time.  I  believe 
you  were  actually  on  the  staff  of  the  Globe  and 
when  you  find  how  popular  in  America  the  Funny 
Column  is,  it  may  amuse  you  to  write  an  essay 
claiming  that  the  "By  the  Way"  column  of  the 
Globe,  a  hundred  and  more  years  old,  was  the 
parent  of  these  wise,  witty,  tender  and  caustic 
Columns. 

Those  days  and  these!  You  have  indeed  made 
good.  You  began  in  the  most  modest  way;  you 
tiptoed  into  die  sea  of  literature,  making  no  splash, 
hardly  a  ripple,  on  a  Brighton  paper,  was  it  not? 
Something  under  a  quarter  of  a  century  passes  and 
here  is  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse  after  reading  your 
happy  book  "The  Phantom  Journal"  asserting  that 


184  Authors  and  I 

you  are  "more  proficient  in  the  pure  art  of  the 
essayist  than  anyone  since  R.  L.  Stevenson."  And 
here  is  Mr.  Clement  K.  Shorter  saying  that  you 
have  had  "the  most  entrancing  career  as  a  man 
of  letters  of  any  living  writer  in  England."  You 
are  the  only  writer  of  my  acquaintance  who  runs 
into  new  editions  so  quickly  that  I  become  quite 
giddy.  Reviewers  love  you  and  say  no  end  of  things 
about  your  charm  and  humour.  Everybody  seems 
to  read  you  from  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse  to  your  sea 
side  landlady,  and  everybody  likes  you  and  says, 
"What  a  nice  man  he  must  be!  I  should  like  to 
meet  him."  I  smile  at  that  because  I  know  how 
retiring  you  are:  by  that  I  mean  that  you  prefer  to 
choose  your  friends,  not  be  chosen ;  that  you  are 
splendid  on  a  country  walk,  and  delightful  at  a 
remote  cricket  match,  but  that  in  a  club  lounge  or 
at  the  high  table  of  a  public  dinner  a  curled-up 
hedgehog,  compared  with  you,  is  a  hail-fellow-well- 
met. 

How  many  books  have  you  published?  I  give  it 
up.  But  I  know  that  very  soon  the  interesting 
list,  that  authors  sneak  into  the  page  "facing  title" 
which  is  called  "Books  by  the  Same  Author,"  will 
have  to  run  over  to  a  second  page.  Has  this  ever 
happened  before?  I  doubt  it.  But  at  least  I  can 
attempt  to  group  your  books.  Your  first  was  a 
book  of  Poems  ("that  nobody  knows  anything 
about") :  your  second  was  "Bernard  Barton  and 
His  Friends"  published  in  1893.  There  are  the 
Essays,  such  as  "Comedy  and  Character"  and  "Fire 
side  and  Sunshine";  the  Wanderer  books,  such  as 


E.  V.  Lucas  185 

"A  Wanderer  in  London" ;  the  Lucasian  novels  (not 
really  novels)  such  as  "Over  Bemerton's"  and 
"Landmarks";  the  Poetry,  Prose,  and  "Letter" 
anthologies,  such  as  "The  Open  Road,"  "Some 
Friends  of  Mine"  and  "The  Gentlest  Art";  the 
Books  for  Children,  such  as  "Anne's  Terrible  Good 
Nature"  and  "The  Slow  Coach";  the  Humorous 
Books,  such  as  "Wisdom  While  You  Wait."  And 
there  is  "The  Life  of  Charles  Lamb." 
Besides  all  this  you  are  a  busy  literary  journalist 
writing  regularly  for  the  London  Times  Literary 
Supplement  and  other  journals;  you  are  Assistant 
Editor  of  Punch,  very  useful,  and  often  rather 
bored  at  the  Wednesday  dinner  when  the  Cartoon 
is  discussed;  and  you  are  a  publisher's  reader,  and 
I  believe  a  partner  in  the  firm  of  Mcthucn  &  Co. 
You  must  have,  I  think,  what  the  world  calls  a 
good  business  head.  You  told  me  once  that  you 
have  never  sold  a  book  outright,  that  you  always 
retain  a  royalty.  With  such  ever-selling  anthologies 
as  "The  Open  Road"  and  "The  Friendly  Town" 
and  the  "Wanderer"  books  this  foresight  must  be 
agreeably  rewarded.  You  make  friends  of  the 
right  kind ;  your  mind  is  so  compact  and  inquisitive, 
your  opinions  so  reasonable,  your  judgment  so  sound 
and  independent  of  ulterior  motives,  your  outlook 
so  humorous  and  unbiased  by  convention,  your 
silences  so  eloquent,  your  conversation  so  alert  and 
to  the  point,  when  it  does  break  out,  that  you  make 
friends  in  all  worlds — the  literary  and  the  sporting; 
in  art  circles  and  in  those  devoted  to  billiards, 
conjuring  vaudeville  and  sport.  Your  clubs  arc 


1 86  Authors  and  I 

The  Athenaeum,  the  Burlington  Fine  Arts,  and  the 
National  Sporting  Club.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said 
of  you  that  nothing  human  is  alien  to  your  sympathy 
— but  the  diverse  humanity  you  seek  must  have 
character  and  comedy  and  play  the  game,  whether 
it  be  annotating  Lamb,  planting  bulbs,  singing  a 
comic  song,  or  capping  quotations.  You  are  sym 
pathetic,  but  you  are  also  always  an  observer, 
never  an  actor,  and  an  observer  with  an  inward 
and  not  always  a  gracious  smile. 
It  will  be  observed  that  I  consider  you  a  wise 
youth:  You  had  a  four-square  literary  foundation. 
As  a  young  man  you  set  yourself  the  gigantic  task 
of  writing  the  "Life  of  Charles  Lamb"  in  two  thick 
volumes,  and  editing  his  works.  You  did  it  su 
premely  well,  and  the  years  of  research  you  gave  to 
it  furnished  you  with  an  erudite  and  canny  knowl 
edge  of  the  literature  of  the  period,  and  opened 
the  way  to  many  of  your  later  books.  On  Charles 
Lamb's  shoulders  you  climbed  up  from  the  horde 
of  writers,  carrying  Elia  with  you,  loving  him,  and 
learning  much  from  him.  It  was  easy  because  as 
humourists  and  observers  you  are  much  akin,  and 
it  is  the  humourist  and  the  observer  that  the  world 
loves  in  you  and  Elia,  whom  you  rightly  call  "the 
most  lovable  figure  in  English  literature."  You 
understand  Lamb  beautifully.  In  the  famous  inter 
view  between  Charles  Lamb  and  Carlyle  when 
Elia  pulled  the  Sage's  leg,  so  quietly  but  so  naught 
ily,  your  comment  is:  "The  history  of  misunder 
standing  has  few  things  better  than  this.  I  like  to 
think  of  the  poor  broken-down  Cockney  sizing  up 


E.  y.  Lucas  187 

his  visitor  in  a  twinkling  and  deciding  to  give  him 
exactly  what  he  merited." 

You  have  also,  my  dear  Lucas,  done  a  thing  which 
many  essay  writers  and  versifiers  would  like  to  do, 
but  they  shrink  from  the  attempt  through  lack  of 
encouragement,  aplomb,  and  a  publisher.  You  have 
compiled  an  anthology  from  your  own  Prose,  Verse, 
Letters,  and  Child  Things  under  the  title  of  "A 
Little  of  Everything."  It  is  excellent  reading. 
My  favourite  is  the  essay  called  "A  Philosopher 
That  Failed" — Oliver  Edwards,  the  solicitor,  who 
is  famous,  for  ever  and  ever,  because  he  once  said 
to  Dr.  Johnson:  "You  are  a  philosopher,  Dr. 
Johnson.  I  have  tried,  too,  in  my  time,  to  be  a 
philosopher,  but  I  don't  know  how;  cheerfulness 
was  always  breaking  in." 

Of  your  fugitive  poems  I  like  best  that  called  "The 
Cricket  Ball  Sings,"  but  perhaps  that  would  not  be 
fully  appreciated  in  this  land  of  Baseball.  Here  is 
a  stanza: 

Give  me  the  fieldsman  whose  eyes  never  itray  from  me, 

Eager  to  clutch  me,  a  roebuck  in  pace: 

Perish  the  unalert,  perish  the  "buttery," 

Perish  the  laggard  I  strip  in  the  race. 

Grand  is  the  ecstasy,  soaring  triumphantly, 

Holding  the  gaze  of  the  meadows  is  grand, 

Grandest  of  all  to  the  heart  of  the  ball 

Is  the  finishing  grip  of  the  honest  brown  hand. 

In  an  essay,  a  delightful  reminder  of  Elia,  called 
"My  Cousin  the  Bookbinder" — that  dear  man, 
that  unforgottcn  Bookbinder,  speaking  of  Charles 


1 88  Authors  and  I 

Lamb,  says,  ".  .  .  this  little  one  who  calls  himself 
Elia  is  all  for  quietness  and  not  being  seen,  and 
having  his  own  thoughts  and  his  own  jokes.  .  .  ." 
Really,  that  is  not  at  all  a  bad  description  of  you. 


35.    MAURICE  MAETERLINCK 

T  T  AD    Maeterlinck    not    come    to    America    it 
A  A    would  have  been  simple  to  write  about  him, 
to   recall,    with    gratitude,   his   literary   advent   in 
London,  and  my  joy.     Those  were  white  days,  the 
days  when  I  first  saw  "Pelleas  and  Melisande"  and 
"The  Intruder";  when  I  first  read  "The  Treasure 
of  the  Humble"  and  "The  Life  of  the  Bee."    He, 
himself,  has  not  changed.    Of  that  I  had  testimony 
at  his  second  lecture  in  Carnegie  Hall.     He  is  still 
the  quiet,  aloof,  self-contained  man,  a  sage  in  dress 
clothes,  watching  the  audience,  a  little  surprised,  a 
little  anxious,   as  a   thoroughbred   racehorse  looks 
when  examining  the  crowd  about  him. 
The  Vortex  called.     Maurice  Maeterlinck  has  been 
in  the  Vortex.     The  Apostle  of  Silence  came  to 
America  to  deliver  a  message,  and  lo!  the  Apostle 
of  Silence  found  himself  in  a  Hubbub. 
No  doubt,  by  this  time,  Maurice  Polydore  Marie 
Bernard  Maeterlinck  has  learned  that  America  is 
more  eager  to  see  him,  and  to  note  how  he  delivers 
his  message,  than  to  be  informed  of  the  content  of 
the  message.     That  is  the  way  of  audiences,  and 
that  being  so  I  hardly  see  why  audiences  should 
object  to  the  delivery  of  his  lectures   in   French, 
which  was  the  basis  of  his  dispute  with  Mr.  Pond 
of   the   Pond    Lyceum   Bureau.      (I   hope   it  has 
189 


190  Authors  and  I 

been  settled.)    It  is  a  rare  treat  to  hear  such  French ; 
it   was   painful    to   listen   to    the   Sage   trying   to 
express   himself   in    phonetic    English.      It    was    a 
failure,  but  he  emerged  from  it  beautifully.    Actors 
of  wide  experience  might  envy  his  poise  and  self- 
command.     Never  before  has  there  been  such  an 
acute  example  of  the  precept  about  a  good  man 
struggling  against  adversity.     Gratefully  upon  his 
ears  must  have  fallen  the  voice  of  a  lady  crying 
from  the  audience,  "Say  it  in  French,  sir." 
Perhaps  when  Maeterlinck  has  thought  it  all  over, 
and  has  returned  to  the  Villa  les  Abeilles,  Avenue 
des  Baumettes,  Nice,  he  will  write  a  new  essay  and 
call  it  "Manhattan,  or,  How  I  Was  Drawn  into 
the  Vortex."    And  perhaps  of  all  the  strange  expe 
riences    he    underwent    in    the    New    World    the 
strangest  was  the  interview  with  a  group  of  New 
York  newspapermen.    It  may  not  have  been  strange 
to  him,  for  his  meditations  carry  him  into  strange 
vagaries  of  thought ;  but  it  was  strange  to  them  for 
New  York  newspapermen   have  been   schooled   to 
regard  Maeterlinck  the  Mystic  as  a  Figure  of  Mys 
tery,  and  here  was  this  vigorous  transcendentalist, 
clad  in  a  woolen  lounge  suit,  with  carpet  slippers 
upon  his  feet,  saying,  "I  love  the  boxing.    I  have 
boxed  with  Kid  McCoy.  He  is  not  only  a  boxer, 
but  a  philosopher,  too."    The  reporters  also  realised 
that  the  Sage  knows  what  Carpentier  weighs.     "I 
have  boxed  with  him  three  or  four  times,"  he  said 
proudly.    The  present  writer  was  not  at  the  inter 
view,  but  there  it  is  all  set  down  in  cold  print.    I  am 
glad  I  was  not  there.    It  is  so  much  more  interest- 


Maurice  Materlinck  191 

ing  to  imagine  it;  but  it  is  rather  difficult.  I  can 
imagine  Mr.  Henry  Ford  as  an  Interior  Decorator 
with  a  leaning  toward  salmon-pink.  I  can  even 
imagine  Mr.  William  Randolph  Hearst  as  an  Eng 
lish  Gentleman  with  a  leaning  toward  chivalry,  but 
only  with  a  great  effort  can  I  imagine  the  author  of 
"Wisdom  and  Destiny"  and  "The  Intruder"  as  a 
boxer  nimble  on  his  pins,  and  quick  on  the  uptake. 
Here  is  the  account — "The  poet  threw  forward  his 
body,  doubled  his  fists  and  danced  about  Mr.  Russell 
for  several  seconds.  Despite  his  great  size  and  portly 
build  the  Belgian's  footwork  was  swift,  .  .  .  his 
toes  tapped  lightly  on  one  of  Mr.  Anderson's  valu 
able  bear  rugs,  nearly  upsetting  a  vase  of  lilies.  'I 
love  the  boxing,'  cried  the  Sage,  'I  have  boxed  with 
Kid  McCoy.'  And  Kid  McCoy  in  turn  has  told 
the  world  this:  'I  had  the  pleasure  of  boxing  with 
a  poet  some  time  ago.  His  name  is  Maeterlinck. 
He's  a  good  boxer  and  a  mighty  good  sport.  You 
know  I  didn't  think  much  of  poetry  until  re 
cently.'  "  All  things  work  together  for  good.  Per 
haps  now  that  Kid  McCoy  has  come  into  contact 
with  poetry  he  will  introduce  it  into  the  boxing 
arena.  I  hope  I  have  got  the  gentleman's  name 
right.  One  is  apt  to  make  mistakes  in  nomen 
clature  with  new  reputations. 

So  disturbing  was  the  passage  of  Maeterlinck  across 
the  Manhattan  firmament  that  I  find  it  difficult  to 
recapture  the  equable  state  of  mind  that  the  name 
of  Maeterlinck  evoked  in  me  ere  he  sailed  up  New 
York  bay  with  his  young  wife  to  attend  the  first 
performance  of  "The  Blue  Bird"  as  an  opera.  All 


192  Authors  and  I 

this  is  too  near  and  restless.  I  must  go  back  to 
days  long  before  "The  Betrothal"  and  "The  Blue 
Bird,"  back,  back  to  the  first  performances  of  his 
plays  at  the  Court  Theatre  in  Sloane  Square — that 
home  of  lost  and  won  theatrical  causes.  I  see 
again  in  memory  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell  and  Mr. 
Martin  Harvey  in  "Pelleas  and  Mclisande" ;  I  see 
play  after  play,  so  still,  so  moving,  and  it  is  strange 
now  to  think  that  we  thought  then  that  these  plays, 
passing  behind  gauzes,  lifting  the  veil,  so  still,  so 
moving,  were  to  be  the  prefaces  to  the  drama  of  the 
future.  Perhaps  they  will  yet. 
Then  came  "The  Treasure  of  the  Humble"  with 
the  shock  of  a  witty  and  cynical  Introduction  by 
A.  B.  Walkley.  But  he  did  one  good  service.  He 
asked  point-blank— "Has  M.  Maeterlinck  anything 
to  say?" 

Of  course  he  has.  It  may  not  be  new  because 
nothing  is  new,  but  this  Belgian  Master  has 
gathered  up  and  written  down  in  beautiful  French 
the  interior  teaching  and  wisdom  of  mankind  from 
Plotinus  to  Emerson,  whispering  the  while  to  an 
obdurate  world,  "What  we  know  is  not  interest 
ing. 

The  mystery  of  life  is  what  makes  life  interesting." 
We  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  world  have  taken  to  him 
more  freely  than  the  Latin  or  the  Flem,  and  we 
have  had  the  immense  advantage  of  two  sym 
pathetic  and  understanding  translators — Alfred 
Sutro  and  Teixeira  de  Mattos.  One  of  them, 
Alfred  Sutro,  is  a  dramatist,  and  perhaps  he  is  still 
asking  himself  if  a  Maeterlinckian  theatre  is  not 


Maurice  Materlinck  193 

still  possible,  "a  static  theatre,  a  theatre  of  mood  not 
of  movement,  a  theatre  where  nothing  material  hap 
pens  and  where  everything  immaterial  is  felt." 
Literary  success  came  to  Maeterlinck  early — per 
haps  too  early.  Popular  success  envelops  him  in 
1920 — perhaps  too  popular.  With  me  he  is  a  mas 
ter  of  the  Past.  He  calls  from  the  Past.  Some 
years  ago  when  he  began  to  write  for  the  Daily 
Mail  I  felt  that  he  was  slipping  out  from  his  Pla 
tonic  cave,  and  when  I  read  his  latest  book,  "Moun 
tain  Paths,"  I  had  a  feeling  that  the  Maeterlinck 
of  "The  Treasure  of  the  Humble"  had  gone  to 
other  adventures.  He  has  not  gone  over  to  Kid 
McCoy,  but  he  now  treats  subjects  about  which 
there  is  really  nothing  to  be  said  because  we  know 
everything  about  them — or  nothing. 
The  Belgian  Sage's  platform  manner  is  admirable. 
He  looked  at  his  second  lecture  just  as  the  author 
of  "The  Treasure  of  the  Humble"  and  "Wisdom 
and  Destiny"  should  look.  Nothing,  I  am  sure, 
would  ruffle  him,  nothing  disturb  him.  He  has 
poise.  He  delivered  his  message  neither  quietly  nor 
riotously;  he  just  delivered  it. 
Do  not  ask  me  what  it  was  about, 
I  have  no  knowledge  of  Odic  Effluvia,  of  the 
Major  and  Minor  Memory,  and  I  have  little  apti 
tude  for  investigations  into  the  communal  life  of 
Insects. 

Such  matters  do  not  trouble  me.  But  they  seemed 
to  disturb  a  young  American,  a  stranger,  who  sat 
by  my  side.  Halfway  through  the  lecture  he  leaned 
toward  me  and  said — "This  is  deep  stuff." 


194  Authors  and  I 

When  it  was  all  over  and  Maeterlinck  had  taken 
his  triple  call,  the  young  American  remarked,  "He 
takes  you  along  a  strange  road,  and  a  pretty  steep 


one." 


"Yes,"  I  answered.  "But  why  travel  out  of  the 
way?  If  you  want  to  go  to  Philadelphia  why  not 
go  straight  there?  Why  go  via  the  Rocky  Moun 
tains,  California,  the  South  Pole  and  Florida?" 
The  young  American  looked  at  me  curiously. 
"There's  something  in  that,"  he  said. 


36.    EDWIN  MARKHAM 

YOU    are      invited,"    said    the    invitation,    "to 
participate    with    the    Joint    Committee    of 
Literary  Arts  in  a  dinner  in  honour  of  Edwin  Mark- 
ham  in  recognition  of  his  genius  as  a  poet  and  his 
worth  as  a  man." 

That  seemed  all  right.  So  I  acquired  a  ticket  and 
noted  the  date  of  the  dinner.  In  the  interval  I 
tried  to  recall  what  I  knew  about  Edwin  Markham 
and  his  very  popular  poem,  "The  Man  with  the 
Hoe."  It  was  published  nearly  twenty  years  ago;  it 
was  suggested  by  Millet's  painting;  and  it  had  the 
distinction  of  being  the  most  quoted  poem  of  the 
day.  Innumerable  newspapers  published  it;  in 
numerable  sermons  were  preached  upon  it;  innu 
merable  editorials  were  written  on  the  questions 
with  which  the  poem  concludes — 

O  masters,  lords  and  rulers  in  all  lands, 
How  will  the  future  reckon  with  this  Man? 
How  answer  his  brute  question  in  that  hour 
When  whirlwinds  of  rebellion  shake  the  world? 

X" 
Strange  to  say  the  future  reckoned  with  this  Man 

by  begging  AH  Mjn  to  take  up  the  hoe  and  help 
to  feed  the  world.  "*  Neither  Mr.  Markham,  nor 
anybody  else,  could  foresee  that  with  the  pressure 
of  the  submarine  menace  in  1916  the  Man  with  the 
195 


196  Authors  and  I 

Hoe  would  become  a  very  important,  a  very  neces 
sary  and  much-admired  person.  In  England  every 
body  in  their  leisure  hours  wielded  a  hoe.  It  was 
unpatriotic  not  to  do  so.  The  present  writer,  clad 
in  a  costume  as  like  to  the  garments  worn  by 
Millet's  peasant  as  his  scanty  wardrobe  permitted, 
hoed  himself  into  a  state  that  bordered  upon  ecstasy. 
He  was  doing  his  bit,  not  doing  it  surpassingly 
well,  but  he  was  helping  to  feed  his  native  land; 
he  was  the  new  Man  with  the  Hoe.  And  he 
murmured  to  himself  the  cheerful  reply  made  twen 
ty  years  ago  by  John  Vance  Cheney  to  Edwin 
Markham's  sad  "Man  with  the  Hoe": 

Strength  shall  he  have,  the  toiler,  strength  and  grace, 

So  fitted  to  his  place. 

Tall  as  his  toil.    Nor  does  he  toil  unblest, 

Labor  he  has,  and  rest. 

I  did  not  trouble  to  acquire  the  three  editions 
of  "The  Man  with  the  Hoe  and  Other  Poems" 
at  $2,  at  $1  and  at  50  cents,  because  I  was  confident 
that  the  poem  would  be  recited  at  the  dinner;  but 
I  did  reflect  on  popularity,  and  the  extravagance  of 
some  literary  judgments.  I  remembered  a  story, 
current  at  the  time,  that  a  well-known  man  had 
offered  $5,000  to  anybody  who  could  produce  a  finer 
poem  than  "The  Man  with  the  Hoe,"  and  in  the 
advertisement  pages  of  "The  Shoes  of  Happiness 
and  Other  Poems,"  by  Edward  Markham,  I  read 
a  series  of  "critical  opinions."  Well,  not  being  a 
poet,  I  am  not  in  the  least  envious,  but  I  looked 
forward  to  the  dinner  with  redoubled  interest,  eager 


Edwin  Markham  197 

to  see  if  such  extravagant  praise  had  had  any  effect 

on  the  venerable  poet.      Here  are  a   few  of  the 

"critical  opinions." 

"The  greatest  poet  of  the  century,"  Ella  Wheeler 

Wilcox. 

"The  Whole  Yoscmite — the  thunder,  the  might, 

the  majesty,"  Joaquin   Miller. 

The  Man  with  the  Hoe/  will  be  the  battle 
cry  of  the  next  thousand  years,"  Jay  William 
Hudson. 

-"A  poem  by  Markham  is  a  national  event,"  Robert 
Underwood  Johnson. 

"Excepting  always  my  dear  Whitcomb  Rilcy,  Ed 
win  Markham  is  the  first  of  the  Americans," 
William  Dean  Howells. 

Can  you  wonder  that  my  pulse  beat  high  as  the 
day  of  the  dinner  approached  ?  Even  though  I  do 
not  write  poetry,  a  Bookman's  pride  extends  to  all 
members  of  his  craft,  from  the  paternal  poet  to 
the  pointed  paragraphist,  and  I  longed  to  see  the 
man  who  wrote  a  poem  that  "will  be  the  battle 
cij  of  the  next  thousand  years."  My  hoe  now 
stands  in  the  umbrella  stand  in  the  little  hall  of 
my  native  home,  from  the  oriel  window  of  which 
may  be  seen  the  croquet  lawn'  converted  into  a 
potato  patch  where 

Bound  by  the  weight  of  centuries  I  leant 
Upon  my  hoe  and  gazed  upon  the  ground, 
The  emptiness  of  ages  in  my  face, 
And  on  my  back  the  burden  of  the  world. 

(The  opening  of  "The  Man  with  the  Hoe" 
slightly  altered.) 


198  Authors  and  I 

Five  hundred  or  so  attended   the  dinner — mostly 
poets.     It  was  heartening  to  see  the  guest  of  the 
evening  greeted   by   his  admirers,   a   kindly,   wise, 
distinguished-looking  man,  in  appearance  something 
between  Robert  Browning  and  Walt  Whitman.  Of 
course    there    was    more    extravagance    of    praise. 
There  always  is  on  such  occasions.     The  name  of 
Shakespeare  was  used  freely,  but  distinguished  poets 
are  accustomed  to  such  flatteries,  and  they  can  do 
nothing  but  sit  still  and  smile  while  they   listen 
to  the  flattery.     It  was  near  midnight  before  the 
poet  rose  to  reply  and  then  something  happened  that 
endeared  the  author  of  "The  Man  with  the  Hoe" 
to  me.     In   his  speech,   after  a   proper  period   of 
seriousness— greatest  moment  of  my  life,  never  to 
be  forgotten,  and  so  on— he  side-tracked  into  remi 
niscences  of  delightful  humour.    A  humorous  poet! 
I  could  hardly  believe  my  ears!     He  gave  us  a  gay 
and  sly  account  of  his  early  years  in  Oregon  and 
California,    farming,   blacksmithing,   herding  cattle 
and  sheep,  and  so  on,  to  newspaper  writing,  Chris 
tian  sociology  and  poetry.    The  room  rippled  with 
laughter,   and   although   midnight   had   struck   we 
were  quite  willing  that  he  should  continue  his  auto 
biography  to  the  present  day,  for  a  serious  poet  with 
an  aura  of  humour  is  an  infrequent  experience. 
The  next  day  I  went  to  a  club  which  has  an  excel 
lent    library   and    asked    the   librarian    for    Edwin 
Markham's  poems.    He  looked  blankly  at  me.    The 
club  did  not  possess  a  copy.     "Such   is  fame,"   I 
murmured.      "Is    it    some    particular    poem    you 
want?"  asked  the  librarian.    "Yes,  The  Man  with 


Edwin  Markham  199 

the  Hoe.'"  He  retired,  and  presently  returned 
staggering  under  the  load  of  the  largest  book  of 
poetry  I  have  ever  seen.  It  is  called  "The  Home 
Book  of  Verse";  it  contains  3,742  pages,  which  is 
necessary,  as  it  enshrines  poems  from  Spenser  to 
the  present  day.  When  I  have  asked  a  carpenter  if 
my  bookshelves  will  stand  the  strain  I  shall  cer 
tainly  acquire  this  volume.  It  contains  hidden  in 
its  3,742  pages  "The  Man  with  the  Hoe"  and 
Cheney's  "Reply,"  and  Markham's  "Lincoln,"  and 
"Auld  Lang  Syne,"  by  Robert  Burns,  which  I 
read  that  afternoon  for  the  first  time,  although  I 
have  pretended  to  sing  it  on  hundreds  of  occasions, 
and  a  little  thing  by  Walt  Whitman  beginning  "At 
the  last,  tenderly,"  and  ending  "Strong  is  your 
hold,  O  love!"  that  has  been  singing  itself  to  me 
ever  since. 

That  rich  afternoon  of  poetry  (it  was  Sunday  and 
the  library  was  empty)  drinking  from  so  many 
fountains  placed  Edwin  Markham  for  me.  He  is  a 
noble,  dignified  and  beautiful  singer  of  noble,  dig 
nified  and  beautiful  themes,  but  he  lacks  magic. 
He  could  not  have  written 

that  found  a  path 

Through  the  sad  heart  of  Ruth,  when,  sick  for  home, 
She  stood  in  tears  amid  the  alien  corn. 

He  is  an  author  rather  than  a  bard.  You  remember 
Macaulay's  distinction  between  the  two.  But  when 
I  reached  home  that  evening  I  read  Markham's 
"Birthday  Greeting  to  John  Burroughs"  and  felt 


2OO  Authors  and  I 

very  grateful  to  him;  and  still  more  grateful  when 
I  read  a  quatrain  which  he  calls 


OUTWITTED 

He  drew  a  circle  that  shut  me  out- 
Heretic,  rebel,  a  thing  to  flout 
But  love  and  I  had  the  wit  to  win: 
We  drew  a  circle  that  took  him  in. 

There  are   folk  who   would   rather  have   written 
that  than  most  things. 


37.    JOHN  MASEFIELD 

OF  all  Englishmen  now  writing,  John  Masefield 
answers  readiest  to  the  fine  old  term — Man 
of  Letters.  He  has  turned  his  deft  hand  to  every 
thing,  and  he  has  succeeded  in  everything.  Poet, 
playwright,  essayist,  teller  of  tales,  war  historian, 
he  has  tried  them  all,  and  he  is  now  in  the  happy 
position  of  knowing  that  his  latest  work  is  his 
best.  There  can  be  no  doubt  about  that.  "Reynard 
the  Fox"  is  a  book  that  will  live,  a  narrative  poem 
that  delights  the  great  public  as  well  as  readers  of 
poetry. 

In  1896,  John  Masefield  was  working  as  a  hand  in 
a  carpet  factory  in  Yonkers.  The  wonder  of  poetry 
came  upon  him  with  a  rush.  Poetry  was  not 
dribbled  out  of  him  as  to  most,  at  school  and  col 
lege,  dribbled  out  in  set  tasks,  the  splendour  slowly 
evaporating  in  the  drudgery  of  the  lesson.  It  came 
to  him  suddenly,  on  great  wings,  one  Sunday 
afternoon  when  he  first  lighted  upon  Chaucer's 
"Parliament  of  Fowls."  It  was  a  new  life,  the 
real  life.  The  gates  were  opened.  He  rushed  in 
and  met  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Shelley,  Keats.  This 
lore  of  great  literature  has  never  left  him.  Readers 
of  his  "Gallipoli"  will  remember  that  he  prefaces 
the  sections  of  this  admirable  narrative  with  extracts 
from  "The  Song  of  Roland." 

201 


2O2  Authors  and  I 

If  I  linger  over  John  Masefield's  early  years  in 
New  York  it  is  because  he  himself  has  touched 
them  vividly,  in  his  collection  of  tales  and  studies 
called  "A  Tarpaulin  Muster."  He  gives  in  "A 
Raines  Law  Arrest"  a  realistic  description  of  what 
he  saw  in  the  humble  position  he  filled  in  the  bar 
of  a  downtown  establishment;  in  "On  the  Pal 
isades"  he  describes  in  a  few  bold  strokes  the  fea 
tures  of  the  Palisades,  and  he  also  shows,  to  New 
York  and  to  the  world,  his  method  as  a  writer.  His 
teacher  is  life.  Great  poets  and  prosemen  showed 
him  the  way  of  beauty  and  strangeness,  how  to 
handle  and  shape  his  material,  but  he  finds  his 
material  in  life.  Thus  the  fabric  of  this  sketch 
"On  the  Palisades"  is  woven  out  of  what  a  ferry 
man  told  him.  Like  Kipling,  he  has  the  gift  of 
talking  with  strangers,  gleaning  stories  from  them: 
he  remembers  the  saliencies.  And  he  has  the 
power  of  writing  simple,  straightforward  English, 
in  which  every  word  tells.  Here  are  two  speci 
mens: 

If  you  take  a  boat  and  row  across  to  the  Palisades  their 
beauty  makes  you  shiver. 

It  is  like  being  in  the  wilds,  in  one  of  the  desolate  places, 
to  lie  there  in  a  boat  watching  the  eagles. 

His  name  first  became  a  reality  to  me  in  rather 
a  curious  way.  I  was  calling  upon  Sir  Douglas 
Straight,  who  was  then  editor  of  the  Pall  Mall 
Gazette.  It  was  noon;  and  while  I  was  waiting 
(editors  are  always  doing  something  else)  an  office 
boy  brought  me  a  copy  of  the  paper  just  off  the 


John  Masefield  203 

press.  Instinctively  I  turned  to  the  editorial  page, 
and  then  to  the  poem,  which  Harry  Cust,  a  former 
editor,  had  introduced  daily  into  the  Occasional 
Notes.  Years  before  John  Morley  had  originated 
the  term,  but  the  printers  always  called  them  Oc. 
Notes.  I  read  the  poem  there  printed  with  im 
mense  interest.  In  it  was  the  tang  of  the  sea  and 
it  moved  to  a  measure  like  a  rolling  billow.  When 
Sir  Douglas  Straight  at  last  came  quickly  into  the 
room  with  a  greeting  I  interrupted  him  with  the 
words:  "Who  wrote  this  fine  poem?  Who  wrote 
it?"  He  did  not  know.  He  sent  to  inquire. 
The  answer  came  back — John  Masefield.  "A  new 
man,"  said  Sir  Douglas.  This  poem  has  since  been 
published  in  "Salt  Water  Ballads." 
A  year  or  so  after  this  I  met  John  Masefield  at  a 
luncheon  party  in  London.  A  quiet  man,  a  modest 
young  man,  virile  and  keen,  and  observant  in  the 
almost  shy,  almost  furtive  way  of  H.  G.  Wells. 
I  do  not  remember  anything  he  said.  Probably  I 
did  not  pay  much  attention  to  him,  for  I  had  no 
idea  that  he  would  do  the  fine  things  that  he  hasi 
since  done. 

Austen  Harrison,  the  editor  of  the  English  Review, 
played  a  noble  part  in  making  the  poetry  of  John 
Masefield  popular.  In  October,  1911,  he  pub 
lished  "The  Everlasting  Mercy"  in  his  review. 
That  needed  courage,  for  the  poem  is  quite  13,000 
words  in  length  and  it  filled  a  large  portion  of  the 
magazine.  Such  courage  had  its  reward.  The 
number  was  sold  out,  John  Masefield,  as  poet,  was 
made,  and  the  literary  world  recognised  that  one 


2O4  Authors  and  I 

editor  at  least  regarded  poetry  as  a  feature,  not  as 
a  "fit  par."  This  admirable  experiment  was  re 
peated.  "The  Daffodil  Fields,"  and  I  think  "The 
Widow  in  the  Bye  Street,"  were  also  published  in 
the  English  Review.  After  "Reynard  the  Fox" 
I  place  "Dauber." 

Like  Conrad,  he  has  been  a  sailor,  but  the  sea,  and 
those  that  go  down  to  it  in  ships,  does  not  dom 
inate  him.  Yet  the  sea  had  a  great  share  in  his 
intellectual  and  emotional  make-up.  Here  is  a 
passage  from  his  sketch  called  "The  Cape  Horn 
Calm": 

Ah,  what  profound  thoughts  I  thought;  what  mute,  but 
Miltonic,  poetry  I  made  in  that  dim  half-deck,  by  the 
smoky  bogey,  in  the  night,  in  the  stillness,  among  the 
many  waters. 

As  a  playwright  he  has  not  yet  had  a  great  success. 
"The  Campden  Wonder"  and  "Nan"  were  out 
standing  plays,  and  were  admired  by  the  few.  His 
greatest  theatrical  success  is,  I  suppose,  "The  Faith 
ful,"  which  was  played  in  New  York  by  the  Drama 
League.  It  was  a  moving  piece,  beautifully  pro 
duced,  but  as  it  was  founded  on  an  ages-old  Jap 
anese  legend,  the  author  became  so  involved  in 
the  point  of  view  of  Japan  that  I  should  never 
have  guessed,  had  not  the  program  said  so,  that 
"The  Faithful"  was  by  the  author  of  "The  Widow 
in  the  Bye  Street." 

His  war  books  are  excellent,  straightforward  state 
ments,  well-shaped,  and  written  in  the  sound,  bal 
anced  prose  that  comes  to  poets.  He  might  have 


John  M as e field  205 

written  "The  Old  Front  Line"  as  a  narrative 
poem,  but  "Gallipoli"  could  only  have  been  done 
in  prose.  The  intricacies  of  that  magnificent 
failure  are  set  forth  so  lucidly  that  it  becomes  one 
of  the  classics  of  the  war.  John  Masefield  is  the 
penman  who  tells  the  tale.  The  theme  being  so 
colossal,  he  himself  is  the  narrator — no  more. 
With  "Reynard  the  Fox"  he  reaches  the  height  of 
his  achievement.  I  have  read  it  four  times  and 
each  time  I  have  kindled.  It  goes  on  my  bookshelf 
against  Chaucer's  "Canterbury  Tales."  It  sings 
the  England  we  all  love,  the  wholesome  out-of-doors 
England,  the  types,  the  cries,  the  sights,  the  sounds. 
It  gallops  into  our  hearts,  and  it  is  John  Mase 
field 's  best  poem,  because  he  loved  the  doing  of 
it — every  line. 

Everything  he  wrote  before  was  a  preparation  for 
this  English  poem,  this  saga  of  English  fields  and 
English  folk,  the  rush  from  hill  to  hill,  the  cry  of 
the  hounds,  the  thunder  of  the  horses,  the  shouts  of 
the  huntsmen,  and  at  night  the  home-coming. 


38.    GEORGE  MEREWTH 

COE    was    Meredith's    valet    and    gardener — 
everything  to  him  for  thirty  years.     One  day 
he  recalled  to  Mr.  Waldo,  over  the  hedge  of  the 
Box  Hill  Cottage,  the  visit  of  an  American  pub 
lisher  to  George  Meredith. 

"We  want  your  books,"  said  the  American;  "we 
want  to  circulate  them  in  cheap  covers  and  make 
them  known  among  the  crowd." 
"That,"    remarked    Coe,    "seemed    to    please    the 
master." 

Yesterday  I  journeyed  by  trolley  car  from  the  village 
where  I  am  staying  to  the  nearest  town — a  pleasant, 
unaggressive  Connecticut  town — to  do  my  week's 
marketing.  I  purchased  bread,  butter,  a  bag  of 
onions,  and  a  can  of  tomato  soup,  had  them  packed 
in  a  strong  parcel  and  then  entered  the  Public 
Library. 

"Have  you  any  of  George  Meredith's  works?"  I 
asked. 

The  librarian  led  me  to  a  shelf  and  handed  me 
"Richard  Feverei"  and  "Rhoda  Fleming,"  in  the 
1889   author's  edition,   and   "Diana  of  the  Cross- 
ways"  in  the  1907  pocket  edition. 
"May  I  take  them  all  home?" 
"Certainly,"  said  the  librarian.     "We  like  to  cir 
culate  good  books." 

206 


George  Meredith  207 

"Then  there  is  not  much  call  for  George  Mere 
dith?"  I  ventured. 
"No.'1 

She  examined  the  date  cards  of  the  three  volumes. 
"None  of  them  has  been  out  since  1917,"  she 
murmured,  a  little  sadly,  I  thought. 
"Have  you  his  poems?"  I  asked.  She  shook  her 
head;  her  curls  looked  dolorous.  "We  ought  to 
have  George  Meredith's  poems,"  she  said. 
I  saluted  her  and  stepped  outside,  opening  "Richard 
Feverel"  at  the  chapter,  an  old  favourite,  called 
"The  Blossoming  Season":  my  eyes  fell  upon  this 
passage:  "Culture  is  halfway  to  Heaven";  and 
below  was  this  from  "The  Pilgrim's  Script"— 
"Who  rises  from  Prayer  a  better  man,  his  prayer 
is  answered." 

The  arrival  of  the  trolley  car  interrupted  my  read 
ing,  but  seated  in  the  corner  I  plunged  into  the 
first  meeting  between  Richard  and  Lucy,  perhaps 
the  most  beautiful  analysis  of  dawning  love  between 
two  young,  high-spirited  and  charming  creatures  in 
the  English  language.  I  had  just  reached:  "To 
morrow  this  place  will  have  a  memory — the  river 
and  the  meadow,  and  the  white  falling  weir,"  when 
the  trolley  car  stopped.  It  was  the  end  of  the 
journey.  I  bundled  out,  and  remembered,  sud 
denly,  that  I  had  left  my  parcel  of  marketing  in 
the  Public  Library.  It  looked  as  if  I  would  have 
a  skimpy  supper.  But  that  is  another  story.  At 
any  rate,  I  had  Meredith  with  me. 
On  the  way  home  up  Ferry  Lane  I  asked  myself  if  it 
was  not  quite  natural  that  the  patrons  of  that 


2o8  Authors  and  I 

rather  remote  Connecticut  township  should  dis 
regard  Meredith.  He  is  so  essentially  English;  he 
is  dyed  in  the  aristocratic  viewpoint  and  he  loves 
the  iridescent  stain.  What  could  a  Connecticut 
farmer  make  of  Sir  Willoughby  Pattern's  leg,  or 
of  Diana  and  Redworth,  or  Lady  Blandish,  or  the 
Wise  Youth,  all  so  English,  so  very  English?  In 
truth  the  brilliant  restlessness,  the  bird's  flight 
quickness  of  George  Meredith'  mind,  the  alert  syn 
copated  dialogue  is  too  fatiguing  for  many  English 
men.  And  although  English  women  are  fond  of 
saying  that  he  is  the  only  author  who  understands 
women,  it  was  Marie  Corelli's  books  they  bought 
wholesale.  But  those  who  really  call  themselves 
Meredithians  are  his  wholly  and  absolutely.  They 
accept  him  in  his  entirety,  and  they  will  not  hear 
a  word  against  "Lord  Ormont  and  His  Aminta," 
"The  Amazing  Marriage,"  or  even  those  bewilder 
ing  odes  celebrating  French  history— "The  Revo 
lution,"  "Napoleon,"  "France,  1870,"  and  "Alsace- 
Lorraine."  In  these  odes,  I  admit,  I  stuck. 
Frankly,  it  did  not  seem  to  me  worth  while  to 
unravel  their  meaning,  and  I  remember  one  dis 
tracted  night  when  I  had  tortured  myself  over  "the 
incandescent  Corsican,"  turning  for  relief  to  the 
last  page  of  "Rhoda  Fleming,"  to  the  poignant  sim 
plicity  of  Dahlia's  ultimate  cry— "Help  poor 
girls." 

It  was  the  ardent  Meredithians  who  resented  the 
master's  corrections  in  the  novels  for  the  uniform 
edition  issued  nearly  twenty  years  ago.  The  changes 
hurt.  Disciples  did  not  want  a  word  altered,  and 


George  Meredith  209 

when  Meredith's  friends  wrote  articles  in  the  liter 
ary  papers  urging  that  the  changes  were  unimpor 
tant,  the  stalwarts  retorted  with  parallel  columns 
giving  the  old  text  and  the  new,  showing  that  the 
exacting  Master  had  cut  and  slashed  at  will. 
Slowly,  very  slow  his  novels  brought  him  fame ; 
the  Meredithian  beverage  was  much  too  heady  for 
the  Victorian  public,  nurtured  on  the  spiritual 
everydayness  of  George  Eliot,  and  the  cathedral 
town  proprieties  of  Anthony  Trollope. 
Many  of  the  novels  were  written  by  Meredith, 
writing-board  on  knee,  in  the  chalet  that  he  had 
built  on  an  eminence  in  his  garden  at  Box  Hill. 
Behind  the  chalet  a  path  led  through  a  wood  where 
he  would  walk  and  compose.  When  the  fit  was 
on,  Coe  had  to  carry  the  dinner  back  to  the  kitchen 
and  wait  patiently  till  the  winged  words  were 
written  down. 

One  summer  evening  I  was  invited  with  a  friend 
to  dine  at  Box  Hill.  We  arrived  near  sundown; 
Meredith  was  in  the  chalet,  still  at  work;  we 
waited.  Presently  he  emerged,  clad  in  white,  with 
a  big  white  sombrero  hat  upon  his  head.  He  did 
not  see  us,  but  he  saw  the  sun,  a  round  red  ball. 
Off  swept  his  hat;  he  made  a  deep  obeisance.  In 
looks  he  was  quite  unlike  the  typical  English 
man,  regular  aquiline  features,  white  hair  and 
beard  that  curled  (Senator  Lodge  might  be  his  half- 
brother),  and  eyes  that  twinkled  and  flashed. 
The  dinner  grieved  me.  Meredith  was  in  his 
liveliest  Robin  Goodfellow  mood,  mischief  and 
humour  dominated  him,  and  his  butt  was  a  young 


210  Authors  and  I 

man,  a  relative.  This  sententious  youth  made  a 
sententious  remark  with  the  soup.  It  was  about 
the  vintage  of  the  wine  we  were  drinking.  Like 
a  sword,  the  Master's  irony  leapt  forth,  and  what 
ever  turn  the  conversation  took  he  brought  it  back 
to  the  discomfiture  of  the  sententious  youth.  His 
mental  agility  was  wonderful,  but  (I  thought)  un 
kind. 

A  few  years  later  I  saw  him  again  at  a  Private 
View  in  charge  of  a  lady  popular  in  London  society ; 
his  face  wore  a  continuous  smile;  the  attention  he 
received  evidently  pleased,  perhaps  amused  him. 
My  last  view  of  him  was  sitting  in  the  Bath  Chair, 
drawn  by  a  pony,  or  pushed  by  a  friend,  in  which, 
when  he  could  no  longer  walk,  he  used  to  make 
little  excursions  over  the  hills  around  his  house, 
ever  talking,  ever  smiling. 

His  mind,  in  those  latter  days,  was  alert  and 
vigorous  as  ever;  his  sympathy  with  youth  and  the 
coming  generation  never  flagged.  "I  suppose,"  he 
said  to  a  friend,  "I  should  regard  myself  as  getting 
old — I  am  74.  But  I  do  not  feel  to  be  growing  old, 
either  in  heart  or  mind.  I  still  look  on  life  with  a 
young  man's  eye."  That  was  so ;  and  he  had  written 
in  "Love  in  the  Valley"  a  poem  which  stands  with 
Spenser's  "Epithalamion"  and  Mrs.  Browning's 
"Sonnets  from  the  Portuguese"  as  one  of  the  three 
finest  love  poems  in  die  language.  It  is  the  essence 
of  lyric  love,  half  angel  and  half  bird,  and  it  is 
compact  of  young-eyed  Meredith — he  who  wrote 
of  Richard  and  Lucy.  Once  I  knew  "Love  in  the 


George  Meredith  211 

Valley"  by  heart.     It  sings  still.     Bits  come  back 
to  me  as  I  write. 

When  her  mother  tends  her  before  the  laughing  mirror, 

Tying  up  her  laces,  looping  up  her  hair, 
Often  she  thinks,  were  this  wild  thing  wedded, 

More  love  should  I  have,  and  much  less  care.  .  .  . 
Shy  as  the  squirrel  and  wayward  as  the  swallow, 

Swift  as  the  swallow  along  the  river's  light   .  .  . 
Lovely  are  the  curves  of  the  white  owl  sleeping 

Wavy  in  the  dusk  lit  by  one  lone  star.  .  .  . 
Happy  happy  time,  when  the  white  star  hovers 

Low  over  dim  fields  fresh  with  bloomy  dew  .  .  . 
Prim  little  scholars  are  the  flowers  of  her  garden, 

Trained  to  stand  in  rows,  and  asking  if  they  please  .  .  . 
Peering  at  her  chamber  the  white  crowns  the  red  rose, 

Jasmine  winds  the  porch  with  stars  two  and  three. 
Parted  is  the  window;  she  sleeps!  the  starry  jasmine 

Breathes  a  falling  breath  that  carries  thoughts  of  me. 

And  so  on,  and  so  on — Meredith's  spring  song,  the 
song  of  one  who  remained  perennially  young. 
George  Meredith's  poems  are  the  light,  Thomas 
Hardy's  the  shadow.  Each  has  enriched  our  lit 
erature;  each,  with  great  art,  has  communicated 
to  us  the  progress  of  his  wayfaring.  Hardy  leaning 
to  Acquiescence  in  the  Inevitable,  Meredith,  like 
Stevenson,  to  the  Undiminished  gladness,  the  Un- 
decaying  glory,  the  Undeparted  dream.  When 
things  looked  blackest  Hardy  bows  his  head ;  when 
things  seem  to  be  at  their  worst,  Meredith,  like 
Foch,  attacks,  and,  lo!  the  light. 
Yes,  when  I  read  that  great  utterance  by  Foch,  I 
think  of  Meredith:  "Mon  centre  cede,  ma  droite 
rccule,  situation  exccllentc,  j'attnquc." 


39.    LEONARD  MERRICK 

WHO  are  those  two  men?"  I  asked,  indicating 
two  figures  on  the  outskirts  of  the  lawn. 
My   host    replied — "One    is   George   Gissing,    the 
other  is  Leonard  Merrick." 

With  the  grey  life  and  novels  of  Gissing  I  was 
fairly  familiar,  and  a  great  admirer  of  his  few, 
scholarly,  intensive  travel  books.  Of  the  work  of 
Leonard  Merrick  I  knew  nothing  save  that  his 
novels  usually  dealt  with  actors,  literature  and 
journalism,  that  he  had  been  on  the  provincial  stage, 
and  that  he  was  hardly  more  successful  as  a  novelist 
than  as  an  actor. 

I  began  to  perceive,  as  years  passed,  that  he  had 
strong  backers.  He  is  one  of  those  modern,  unob 
trusive,  uncompetitive  sensitive  men  of  letters  whom 
fellow  craftsmen  delight  to  praise.  One  day 
George  R.  Sims  astonished  me  by  becoming  dithy- 
rambic  about  Leonard  Merrick.  He  praised  his 
novels;  he  blamed  the  public  for  not  appreciating 
this  unemotional,  unsentimental  craftsman;  he  ex 
plained  to  me  the  Merrick  method  of  fiction.  "Per 
haps  he's  a  novelists'  novelist,"  I  murmured.  In 
the  light  of  future  events,  which  I  am  about  to 
relate,  I  am  rather  proud  of  that  intuition. 
Some  day  I  meant  to  read  a  Merrick  novel.  It  was 
Mr.  W.  D.  Howells  who  put  the  idea  into  my 
212 


Leonard  Merrick  213 

head.  His  appreciation  of  "The  Actor  Manager" 
was  so  hearty  and  acute  that  I  felt  the  time  was 
drawing  near  when  I  must  spend  six  shillings  on  a 
Merrick  novel.  Mr.  Howells  had  written:  "I  can 
recall  no  English  novel  in  which  the  study  of  tem 
perament  and  character  is  carried  farther  or  deeper, 
allowing  for  what  the  people  are,  than  in  "The 
Actor  Manager." 

But  this  was  not  all.  The  Merrick  star  was 
ascending.  Writers  began  to  vie  with  each  other 
in  their  eagerness  to  praise  Merrick.  Grave  Pro 
fessor  Tyrrell  wrote  in~The  Speaker:  "A  lady  whom 
I  know  said  to  me,  'Mr.  Merrick  seemed  so  near  to 
me  as  I  read  "The  Man  Who  Understood  Women" 
that  it  embarrassed  me  to  remember  I  was  in  a 
dressing  gown  and  my  hair  was  down.'  "  And  Sir 
J.  M.  Barrie  wrote  this:  "There  is  no  doubt  in  my 
mind  that  'Conrad  in  Quest  of  His  Youth'  is  the 
best  sentimental  journey  that  has  been  written  in 
this  country  since  the  publication  of  the  other  one. 
...  I  know  scarcely  a  novel  by  any  living  Eng 
lishman  except  a  score  or  so  of  Mr.  Hardy's  that 
I  would  rather  have  written." 
All  this  was  extremely  interesting.  I  wondered 
how  Mr.  Merrick  took  it.  And  I  had  not  yet 
read  one  of  his  novels.  I  was  so  interested  in  watch 
ing  the  accumulations  of  praise  from  fellow  writers 
that  it  seemed  supererogatory  to  read  a  Merrick. 
I  bepan  to  make  inquiries.  I  was  told  that  "he 
writes  very  little,  that  he  finds  it  difficult  to  get 
started,  and  to  keep  going,  and  that  a  few  thousand 
words  a  week  are  a  large  output  for  him." 


214  Authors  and  I 

I  also  learned  that  in  London  (this  was  some 
years  before  the  war)  his  books  were  quietly  suc 
cessful,  that  Barrie's  enthusiasm  had  sent  the  book 
sellers'  orders  up,  and  that  he  was  a  very  good 
Tauchnitz  seller.  But  his  admirers  were  not  con 
tent.  They  hustled.  Every  writer  seemed  bent 
on  booming  Merrick.  It  was  a  curious  literary 
phenomenon. 

When  the  novelists  of  eminence  began  to  show 
signs  of  exhaustion  through  their  effort  of  praising 
Leonard  Merrick,  the  publishers  began.  Mr. 
Mitchell  Kennerley  was  the  pioneer  in  America.  De 
scribed  by  a  fellow  publisher  as  one  of  Leonard 
Merrick's  most  generous  patrons  and  best  friends,  he 
began  to  issue  his  novels  in  1910.  They  were  suc 
cessful;  about  10,000  copies  of  each  sold;  there  the 
sale  paused  as  Merrick  was  caviare  to  the  large  pub 
lic.  He  almost  ceased  to  write;  this  novelists' 
novelist,  who  had  always  taken  a  back  seat,  seemed 
to  be  seeking  for  a  still  more  retiring  position  in  the 
upper  gallery. 

Suddenly  another  firm  of  publishers  dragged  him 
out  into  the  centre  of  the  orchestra  stalls,  and 
started  the  band  playing  a  triumphal  march.  No 
body  can  stop  a  publisher  when  he  is  determined  to 
push  a  timid  author  into  the  blaze  of  publicity. 
The  firm  in  question  was  Messrs,  Hodder  & 
Stoughton  of  London,  an  astute  firm  who  took  quick 
advantage  of  the  extraordinary  enthusiasm  shown 
by  contemporary  writers  to  keep  Mr.  Merrick  in 
the  orchestra  stalls  with  the  band  at  full  blast. 
It  was  decided  to  issue  a  uniform  edition  of  his 


Leonard  Merrick  215 

novels,  and  to  preface  each  volume  with  an  intro 
duction  by  literary  and  admiring  contemporaries. 
They  hastened  to  the  adventure.  They  fell  over 
each  other,  to  quote  Sir  James  Barrie's  words,  "in 
their  desire  to  join  in  the  honour  of  writing  the 
prefaces."  Such  a  confraternity  of  praise  from  fel 
low  writers  has  never  happened  before  in  the  his 
tory  of  literature.  The  writers  who  fell  over  each 
other  in  their  eagerness  to  write  prefaces  were: 
W.  D.  Howells,  Sir  James  Barrie,  H.  G.  Wells, 
Maurice  Hewlett,  W.  J.  Locke,  G.  K.  Chester 
ton,  Sir  W.  Robertson  Nichol,  Sir  Arthur  Pinero, 
J.  K.  Prothero,  Neil  Munro,  Granville  Barker,  and 
Nell  Lyons. 

So  everybody  was  able  to  buy  any  or  all  of  the 
novels  of  Leonard  Merrick  each  with  a  preface,  per 
sonal  and  particularly  eulogistic,  by  a  famous  au 
thor.  And  of  course  America  was  not  going  to 
allow  England  to  beat  her  in  forcing  this  fortunate 
novelist  to  remain  in  the  best  seat  in  the  orchestra 
stalls.  Mr.  Mitchell  Kennerley  sold  his  plates  and 
rights  to  E.  P.  Dutton  &  Co.,  and  that  firm  issued 
a  limited,  uniform  edition  of  the  Merrick  novels, 
each  with  a  preface  by  a  famous  author. 
In  the  many  books  Mr.  Leonard  Merrick  has  writ 
ten  about  authors,  successful  and  unsuccessful,  he 
has  never  imagined  for  a  hero  such  an  extraor 
dinary  compliment  as  has  been  paid  to  him.  Had 
the  idea  entered  his  head  he  would  have  dismissed 
it  as  incredible. 

It  might  almost  have  seemed  incredible  to  me  had  I 
not  the  ocular  demonstration  of  the  twelve  volumes 


2i6  Authors  and  I 

of  the  English  edition  standing  in  a  pile  on  my  writ 
ing  table.  I  have  read  all  the  prefaces,  such  caper 
ing,  delightful  Merrick  idolatry,  and  I  have  read 
six  of  the  volumes.  It  was  no  hard  task ;  each  story 
was  a  grave  pleasure.  Leonard  Merrick  is  an  artist, 
not  a  great  artist  like  Turgenev,  not  a  master  of 
insight  like  Meredith.  He  works  in  the  temperate 
zone;  he  is  never  wrong  but  he  never  soars.  His 
subtlety  is  equable;  his  finesse  is  exquisite,  but  I 
find  it  difficult  to  remember  the  plots  and  characters 
of  the  six  Merricks  I  have  just  read.  I  shall  give 
myself  a  holiday.  I  shall  postpone  reading  the  other 
six  till  next  week. 


Later.  I  have  read  them — with  grave  pleasure,  and 
grave  interest.  To  "merrick"  is  to  write  as 
Leonard  Merrick  writes. 


40.    ALICE  MEYNELL 

npHERE  were  two  girls  who  had  an  admirable 
A  education.  Those  who  know  these  ladies 
will  not  accuse  me  of  exaggeration.  Their  father 
gave  them  this  education,  mainly  in  Italy.  His 
name  was  T.  J.  Thompson.  The  girls  were  called 
Elizabeth  and  Alice.  Each  has  become  famous;  one 
as  artist,  the  other  as  poet  and  essayist.  Eliza 
beth  (Lady  Butler)  is  the  painter  of  "The  Roll 
Call,"  "Quatre  Bras,"  "Inkermann,"  "Tent- 
Pegging  in  India,"  "Missed." 
Alice  (Mrs.  Wilfrid  Meynell)  published  her  first 
volume  of  poems,  "Preludes"  while  she  was  still 
a  girl;  "Preludes"  was  republished  with  some 
changes  and  additions  in  1893;  her  latest  volumes 
are  "A  Father  of  Women,  and  Other  Poems,"  and 
a  volume  of  essays  called  "Hearts  of  Controversy," 
both  issued  in  1917. 

It  is  not  easy  to  write  dispassionately  of  the  Meynell 
household,  one  of  the  few  homes  in  London  where 
poetry  and  thought  have  been  highly  and  consistently 
honoured,  and  mingled  with  ever-ready  hospitality 
and  encouragement.  So  many  Americans,  so  many 
English  can  testify  to  this.  Francis  Thompson  (he 
was  not  a  relation)  found  in  this  family  the  in 
spiration  of  many  of  his  poems;  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Mey 
nell  were  his  counsellors,  and  the  custodians  of  his 
217 


21 8  Authors  and  I 

welfare  during  an  unbroken  intimaq'  of  nineteen 
years;  the  dedication  of  his  Poems  is  to  Wilfrid  and 
Alice  Meynell.  Had  it  not  been  for  them  he  would 
have  sunk  under  the  burden  of  an  existence  which 
he  was  unable  to  confront  alone.  Poets  and  writers 
of  high  purpose  came,  and  come,  to  this  household, 
by  instinct  of  a  right  of  way  to  the  things  that  mat 
ter.  Many  of  these  visitors,  who  soon  became 
friends,  have  dangled  the  children  on  their  knees, 
and  have  watched  Viola  Meynell  take  her  place,  so 
early,  as  one  of  the  new  novelists  who  count ;  have 
acknowledged  that  her  brother,  Everard,  has  written 
one  of  the  best  biographies  of  the  decade  in  "The 
Life  of  Francis  Thompson" ;  and  have  laughed 
secretly  and  happily,  knowing  that  the  author  of 
"Aunt  Sarah  and  the  War,"  published  anonymously, 
in  the  first  year  of  the  war,  which  leaped  quickly 
into  the  100,000  circulation,  was  the  father,  Wilfrid 
Meynell. 

And  while  the  family  were,  in  various  ways,  pro 
ducing  and  encouraging  literature  and  art,  the 
mother,  the  usually  silent  but  exquisitely  sympathetic 
hostess,  Alice  Meynell,  was  adding  year  by  year,  so 
slowly,  so  fastidiously  to  her  slender  sheaf  of  poems 
and  essays;  and  slowly,  quite  slowly  her  fame — it 
seems  absurd  to  call  so  quiet,  cloistral  and  gradual  a 
recognition  fame — was  spreading  among  those  who 
value  distinction,  restraint,  packed  thought,  insight, 
and  delicacy  of  observation.  But  the  other  day  I 
found  in  an  American  magazine  two  pages  by  her 
called  "Superfluous  Kings,"  the  title  taken  from 
Shakespeare's  "Superfluous  Kings  for  Messengers." 


Alice  Meynell  219 

I  read  no  more  that  day.  I  did  not  want  to  dis 
tract  myself  from  those  brief  pages. 
Alice  Meynell  is  not  an  easy  writer  to  read,  and 
she  does  not  find  composition  easy.  She  works  very 
slowly  with  pencil  and  pad  in  the  morning  hours. 
Words  and  sentences  are  a  sacred  rite  to  her.  She 
broods  until  her  thought  shapes  itself,  and  she  does 
not  allow  the  high  and  intricate  altitude  of  her  art 
to  be  scaled  easily  by  the  reader.  He  must  rise  to 
her  austere  level.  The  reward  is  great,  but  the 
casual  reader  must  be  prepared  to  give  himself,  and 
to  consider  and  reconsider  such  sentences  as: 

In  Spain  was  the  Point  first  put  upon  Honour. 

Not  excepting  the   falling  stars— for  they   are   far   lets 

sudden — there  is  nothing  in  nature  that  so  outstrips  our 

unready  eyes  as  the  familiar  rain. 

Tribulation,  Immortality,  the  Multitude:  what  remedy  of 

composure    do   these   words   bring   for   their   own   great 

disquiet 

To  mount  a  hill  is  to  lift  with  you  something  lighter  and 

brighter  than  yourself  or  than  any  meaner  burden. 

These  are  but  four  extracts  taken  at  random;  they 
are  given  to  show  that  this  writer,  so  chary  in  pro 
duction,  so  reluctant  to  publish,  gives  to  the  reader 
something  that  makes  him  reconsider  and  revalue 
his  thought  from  her  enwrapped  thought. 
Her  first  volume  of  twenty  essays  "The  Rhythm  of 
Life,"  containing  "Dccivilised,"  ''Composure," 
"The  Lesson  of  Landscape,"  was  published  in 
1893.  In  literary  circles  it  had  immediate  recogni 
tion  and  success.  Coventry  Patmore  published  a 
eulogistic  article  in  the  Fortnightly  Review,  which 


22O  Authors  and  I 

began,  "I  am  about  to  direct  attention  to  one  of 
the  very  rarest  products  of  nature  and  grace — a 
woman  of  genius."  The  poet  of  "The  Unknown 
Eros"  continued  to  be  a  most  devoted  admirer  of 
her  gifts,  and  before  long  George  Meredith  also 
enrolled  himself  among  her  intellectual  admirers. 
He  was  able  to  read  Mrs.  Meynell  week  by  week, 
for  she  was  one  of  the  six  women-writers  engaged 
by  the  editor  of  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  Harry 
Cust,  to  contribute  to  "The  Wares  of  Autolycus" 
column.  There,  for  two  or  three  years,  she  wrote 
a  weekly  essay,  and  George  Meredith  rarely  missed 
sending  a  letter,  with  flowers  grown  in  his  garden, 
at  Box  Hill,  of  enthusiastic  appreciation.  The 
essayist  had  come  into  her  kingdom  and  her  chief 
courtiers,  George  Meredith  and  Coventry  Pat- 
more,  were  the  chief  lights  of  the  literary  world. 
In  the  same  year,  1893,  her  "Poems"  were  pub 
lished,  uniform  with  "The  Rhythm  of  Life."  I 
do  not  suppose  that  two  volumes,  such  slender 
volumes,  have  ever  been  received  with  equal  favour 
and  gratitude  by  the  few  and  fit.  In  America,  too, 
she  had  her  great  admirers,  and  her  brief  lecture 
tour  is  remembered  as  something  separate  and  apart 
from  other  lectures. 

Although  "Preludes"  of  1875  had  long  been  out  of 
print  copies  of  it  were  treasured.  William  Sharp 
in  "The  Sonnets  of  the  Century"  had  said : 

In  its  class  I  know  no  nobler  or  more  beautiful  sonnet 
than  "Renouncement";  and  I  have  so  considered  ever 
since  the  day  I  first  heard  it,  when  Rossetti  (who  knew  it 


Alice  Mcynell  221 

by  heart),  repeating  it  to  me,  added  that  it  was  one  of 
the  three  finest  sonnets  ever  written  by  women. 

Ruskin,  too,  said  great  things  about  the  poems 
in  "Preludes": 

The  last  verse  of  that  perfectly  heavenly  "Letter  from  a 
Girl  to  Her  Own  Old  Age,"  the  whole  of  "San  Lorenzo's 
Mother,"  and  the  end  of  the  sonnet,  'To  a  Daisy,"  are  the 
finest  things  I  have  yet  seen  or  felt  in  modern  verse. 

"Renouncement"  is  in  the  "Anthologies" ;  but  since 
there  may  be  some  to  whom  it  is  unfamiliar,  I  give 
myself  the  pleasure  of  copying  it: 

RENOUNCEMENT 

I  must  not  think  of  thee;  and,  tired  yet  strong, 

I  shun  the  love  that  lurks  in  all  delight — 

The  love  of  thec — and  in  the  blue  heaven's  height, 

And  in  the  dearest  passage  of  a  song. 

Oh,  just  beyond  the  sweetest  thoughts  that  throng 

This  breast,  the  thought  of  thee  waits  hidden  yet  bright; 

But  it  must  never,  never  come  in  sight; 

I  must  stop  short  of  thee  the  whole  day  long. 

But  when  sleep  comes  to  close  each  difficult  day, 

When  night  gives  pause  to  the  long  watch  I  keep, 

And  all  my  bonds  I  needs  must  loose  apart, 

Must  doff  my  will  as  raiment  laid  away, — 

With  the  first  dream  that  comes  with  the  first  sleep 

I  run,  I  run,  I  am  gather'd  to  thy  heart. 

So  you  learn,  reader,  that  in  the  household  where 
this  poet  and  essayist  presides,  the  arts  arc  treasured, 
reticence  encouraged,  and  rejection  favoured.  But 
there  is  laughter  too  and  delight  in  life,  for  Mrs. 
Meynell  has  humour  which  ripples  forth  when  the 


222  Authors  and  I 

burden  of  the  world  compassion  she  carries  presses 

less  heavily  on  her. 

The  charm  of  her  tall,  light  figure  is  preserved 

in  a  drawing  by  Sargent;  and  perhaps  she  never 

said  anything  more  characteristic  than  this  of  her 

Father — "He  had  an  exquisite  style  from  which  to 

refrain." 


41.    STEPHEN  PHILLIPS 

ANEW  YORK  church  announced  for  Sunday 
evening — a  Community  service. 
Curious,  like  the  Athenians,  for  the  new  thing,  I 
attended.  The  service  was  a  succession  of  surprises, 
but  the  chief  surprise  and  the  chief  interest  was 
when  the  curate,  instead  of  reading  the  lesson  from 
the  Bible,  informed  the  congregation  that  he  had 
selected  for  their  edification  "Marpessa"  by  Stephen 
Phillips.  He  did  not  read  it  very  well;  and  some 
times  he  paused  to  draw  attention  to  a  passage  of 
"surpassing  beauty."  He  dwelt,  I  remember,  with 
immense  approval  on  the  opening  line — "Wounded 
with  beauty  in  the  summer  night." 
Sitting  there  and  listening,  I  said  to  myself,  "This 
is  surely  a  very  unusual  proceeding,  this  reading  a 
long  poem  to  a  very  attentive  congregation  in  an 
Episcopal  church  in  the  Empire  City;  and  after  a 
while  I  found  some  solace  in  recalling  that  Stephen 
Phillips  was  a  son  of  the  Rev.  Stephen  Phillips, 
D.D.,  Precentor  of  Peterborough  Cathedral. 
The  Community  sen-ice  proceeded,  and  as  much  of 
it  had  little  to  do  with  religion,  yet  quite  proper, 
and  of  a  character  to  which  I  would  not  hesitate  to 
invite  the  strictest  of  my  relations,  I  fell  to  thinking 
of  Stephen  Phillips,  and  going  over  in  memory  our 
meetings.  Perhaps  the  cadences  of  "Marpessa" 
223 


224  Authors  and  I 

moved  me  to  tranquil  and  sweet  remembrances,  for 
Phillips  had  the  secret  of  beauty,  and  of  brief  pathos; 
of  careful  beauty  such  as: 

And  live  in  simple  music,  country  songs, 
And  mournful  ballads  by  the  winter  fire. 

I  saw  him  first  in  a  London  drawing  room  in  the 
early  nineties.  He  had  not  then  made  his  great 
success;  he  had  not  then  achieved  what  might  have 
seemed  to  be  impossible ;  he  had  not  then  persuaded 
London  managers,  astute  men  like  Sir  Herbert  Tree 
and  Sir  George  Alexander,  that  there  was  a  public, 
a  paying  public,  a  packed,  cheering  public  for  the 
poetic  drama. 

His  great  year  was  1900.  On  October  31  "Herod" 
was  produced  at  Her  Majesties  Theatre  with  Sir 
Herbert  Beerbohm  Tree  (he  never  took  the  worst 
part)  as  Herod.  It  was  a  wonderful  occasion. 
Poets  were  jubilant,  and  they  whispered  one  to 
another  between  the  acts  that  Sir  George  Alexander 
(he  was  untitled  then  like  Tree,  and,  like  Tree, 
never  out  of  the  movement)  had  commissioned  and 
accepted  for  production  "Paola  and  Francesca"  by 
Stephen  Phillips.  Those  were  great  days.  The  first 
night  of  "Herod"  was  an  event.  Between  the  acts 
an  eminent  poet  said  to  me:  "What  price  'Charley's 
Aunt'  now?"  And  we  all  went  home  mouthing  as 
much  as  we  could  remember  of — 

I  dreamed  last  night  of  a  dome  of  beaten  gold 
To  be  a  counter-glory  to  the  sun. 


Stephen  Phillips  22$ 

And  we  whispered : 

To  me  it  seems  that  they  who  grasp  the  world, 
The  kingdom  and  the  power  and  the  glory, 
Must  pay  with  deepest  misery  of  spirit, 
Atoning  unto  God  for  a  brief  brightness. 

Great  days!  When  I  reached  home,  I  remember 
that  I  dug  out  from  the  cupboard  under  the  stairs 
my  own  poetic  tragedy  called  "The  Unpardonable 
Sin,"  and  began  to  polish  it. 

But  memory  is  travelling  as  fast  as  that  champion 
horse,  Man  o'  War.  I  must  draw  rein.  I  was  say 
ing  that  I  first  met  Stephen  Phillips  in  a  London 
drawing-room  in  the  early  nineties.  He  was  already 
a  poet,  known  to  the  inner  circle,  but  not  yet 
famous.  I  think  he  had  recently  published  the 
lovely  "Lyrics"  and  "The  Apparition,"  than  which 
I  doubt  if  he  ever  wrote  anything  finer: 

She  had  forgotten  nothing,  yet 
Older  she  seemed,  and  still: 
All  quietly  she  took  my  kiss, 
Even  as  a  mother  will. 

And  before  these,  some  years  before,  in  1890,  he 
was  one  of  the  four  friends  who  published  at  Ox 
ford  a  slender,  brown  paper-covered  pamphlet  of 
poetry  called  "Primavera."  The  other  friends  were 
Laurence  Binyon,  his  cousin ;  Manmohan  Ghose, 
and  A.  S.  Cripps. 

But  I  am  still  in  that  London  drawing-room.  He 
came  in;  he  stalked  to  a  corner  and  stood  there 
very  erect,  rather  severe,  without  any  intention  of 
making  himself  agreeable,  as  writers  of  prose  try 


226  Authors  and  I 

to  do.  A  minor  poet  who  happened  to  be  sitting 
by  my  side  nudged  me  and  whispered — "Stephen 
Phillips."  I  examined  him.  He  was  a  fine  figure, 
but  a  singularly  stiff  one;  and  his  clear,  cold  blue 
eyes  did  not  invite  one  to  slap  him  on  the  back 
and  say:  "Well,  and  how  are  things  going?"  He 
had  regular  features,  a  strong  chin,  and  a  chiselled 
nose.  I  was  still  looking  at  him  and  saying  over 
to  myself: 

And  all  the  blue  of  thee  will  go  to  the  sky, 
And  all  thy  laughter  to  the  river's  run; 
But  yet  ... 

Thy  tumbling  hair  will  in  the  West  be  seen, 
And  all  thy  trembling  bosom  in  the  dawn; 
But  yet  ... 

I  was  murmuring  these  lines  to  myself  when  the 
minor  poet  who  was  sitting  next  to  me,  looking 
straight  at  Stephen  Phillips,  said — "Did  you  ever 
see  anything  so  exactly  like  a  Roman  emperor  on 
a  coin?" 

We  met  several  times  after  that  but  he  never  re 
laxed  his  unbending  attitude.  It  may  have  been 
merely  shyness.  One  heard  of  him  from  time  to 
time,  and  gleaned  particulars  of  his  life — how  he 
had  been  an  actor  with  Frank  Benson's  company, 
and  an  army  coach;  how  he  had  a  passion  for 
cricket,  and  how  in  the  end,  after  his  great  success, 
he  settled  down  at  Ashford  in  Middlesex,  to  live 
by  his  pen,  by  poetry,  and  the  poetic  drama,  and 
to  suffer  money  and  other  troubles.  He  was  not  a 
good  manager  of  his  own  affairs,  better  than  Fran- 


Stephen  Phillips  227 

cis  Thompson,  but  worse  than  the  humblest  com 
muter.  But  he  must  have  had  moments  of  ecstasy 
when  he  sat  down  to  read  the  press  notices  that 
are  printed  at  the  end  of  most  of  his  books.  Again 
and  again  it  was  said  that  nothing  like  his  work 
had  been  seen  since  Browning  and  Tennyson.  And 
he  had  the  memory,  too,  of  the  success  he  won  in 
1897  when  his  "Poems"  were  "crowned"  by  the 
Academy  and  he  received  as  a  prize  100  guineas, 
which  went  much  farther  in  those  days. 
But  it  is  a  sorry  business  for  a  poet  to  be  obliged  to 
live  by  his  verse.  In  1915  Martin  Harvey  produced 
his  "Armageddon"  at  the  New  Theatre,  London. 
No,  the  Academy  would  not  have  crowned  that. 
But  there  was  something  of  the  old  chaste  fire, 
tranquil  beauty  and  sensitive  interpretation  in 
"Panama  and  Other  Poems"  published  in  1915. 
When  he  passed  away,  four  and  a  half  years  ago, 
his  fellow  poets  wrote  beautiful  things  about  him, 
for  everyone  was  touched  at  remembering  this 
most  successful  and  most  unfortunate  poet  who 
used  our  sweet  and  flexible  English  tongue  with 
a  distinction  of  simplicity,  a  sense  of  gliding  beauty, 
and  a  nice  taste  in  words  that  is  not  given  to 
many.  And  but  the  other  day,  his  brother,  Harold 
D.  Phillips,  who  is  organist  at  the  Peabody  Institute 
in  Baltimore,  published  in  the  New  York  Evening 
Post  an  article  of  memories  of  the  poet.  It  is  very 
well  written,  but  rather  severe,  very  severe,  and, 
unlike  most  articles,  it  makes  me  long  for  more. 
But  this  is  mere  curiosity.  His  poetry  is  with 
us,  and  for  me  there  is  now  the  memory  of  hearing 


228  Authors  and  I 

"Marpessa"  read  in  a  church  in  place  of  the  Lesson 
which  almost  makes  me  smile;  and  when  I  come 
to  think  of  it  I  did  see  Stephen  Phillips  smile  once. 
It  was  when  I  told  him  the  story  of  "Herod,"  Beer- 
bohm  Tree  and  the  Head  Carpenter  at  Her  Majes 
ties  Theatre. 

Two  days  before  the  performance  Tree  called  a  re 
hearsal  of  the  scenery  of  "Herod"  without  actors, 
without  speech.  Beerbohm  Tree  and  the  Head 
Carpenter  sat  in  the  dress  circle  and  watched  the 
magnificent  scenery  pass  across  the  stage  from  the 
first  scene  to  the  last.  They  sat  in  silence.  There 
was  no  hitch.  Just  before  the  end  Beerbohm  Tree 
turned  to  the  Head  Carpenter  and  said — "Well, 
Johnson,  what  do  you  think  of  the  scenery,  now?" 
To  which  the  Head  Carpenter  replied — "Governor, 
it'll  take  mighty  fine  words  to  carry  it." 
Adieu  happy,  unhappy  poet.  You  are  not  for 
gotten. 


42.    GEORGE  MOORE 

EORGE  MOORE  never  says  anything  for 
effect:  he  conceals  nothing:  when  he  has  a 
thought  or  an  impression  he  utters  it  as  if  nobody 
else  had  ever  had  a  thought  or  an  impression 
before.  Nothing  exists  anywhere  until  it  has 
busied  itself  in  his  consciousness.  All  the  world 
may  use  a  telephone,  but  until  our  author  has 
brought  his  mind  to  bear  upon  the  telephone  it 
does  not  exist  for  him.  But  having  once  become 
conscious  of  the  telephone,  having  reflected  upon  it 
by  his  fireside  in  Ebury  Street,  London,  he  can  say 
something  interesting  and  original  about  the  tele 
phone,  because  it  is  his  mind  and  nobody  else's  that 
is  working  upon  the  subject  of  the  telephone.  He 
thinks  out  things,  in  the  detached,  unmoral,  un 
afraid,  confined,  yet  free  George  Moore  way,  and 
laboriously  narrates  with  the  pen  the  processes 
of  his  thought. 

Whatever  George  Moore  is  writing  about — women 
and  men  in  the  form  of  fiction,  art,  confessions, 
memoirs,  Ireland,  drama,  impressions,  opinions,  his 
friends,  himself — his  procedure  is  the  same.  He 
unwinds  and  rewinds  his  views  and  reflections;  he 
keeps  nothing  back;  he  does  not  seem  to  make  any 
distinction  between  good  and  bad  taste,  between 
propriety  and  impropriety;  his  aim  is  merely  to 
279 


230  Authors  and  I 

wind  upon  the  spool  the  yarn  of  his  thought  which 
represents  the  subject  uppermost  in  his  mind  at  the 
moment.  One  has  only  to  reflect  upon  three  of 
his  latest  books— "Hail  and  Farewell,"  "The  Brook 
Kerith,"  and  "A  Story  Teller's  Holiday"  which 
was  "privately  printed  for  subscribers  only,"  to 
realise  the  detachment  of  his  literary  adventures, 
and  that  to  him  nothing  happens  in  the  world 
unless  it  has  happened  in  his  intellectual  and 
aesthetic  experience.  He  is  the  most  subjective  of 
writers  and  he  is  also  old-fashioned,  for  does  he 
not  insist  that  all  his  books  are  written  not  for 
the  public  but  "for  men  and  women  of  letters?" 
Of  course  what  he  is  really  interested  in  is  self- 
expression  ;  he  is  interested  in  his  own  thoughts  and 
memories.  Whenever  I  think  of  George  Moore  I 
see  him  in  an  armchair  by  his  fireside  in  Ebury 
Street,  stroking  his  cat,  and  through  a  long  evening 
allowing  his  extraordinary  able  mind  to  reflect  on 
the  past,  and  also  encouraging  it  to  open  avenues 
into  the  future.  He  reads  very  little,  but  what  he 
reads  he  absorbs  and  thinks  about.  I  remember 
calling  upon  him  one  morning  when  he  was  living 
in  a  spacious  flat  in  Victoria  Street,  Westminster. 
I  remarked  on  the  absence  of  books  and  asked  him 
how  he  spent  the  day.  He  looked  at  me,  reflecting 
on  my  question,  and  then  said:  "Oh,  I  write  till 
it  is  time  to  go  out  to  dinner.  Writing  bores  me 
less  than  anything  else." 

The  hard-worked  word  naive  is  insistent  in  a  con 
sideration  of  George  Moore.  The  burr  of  the  world 
has  not  affected  his  childlike  vision.  Even  unpleas- 


George  Moore  231 

ant  subjects  he  treats  with  the  candour  of  a  child. 
He  is  always  making  literary  discoveries — such 
extremes  as  Virgil  and  Trollope,  but  when  he  dis 
covers  them  they  become  not  only  new  to  him  but 
also  new  to  us.  When  he  was  preparing  to  write 
"The  Brook  Kerith"  he  discovered  the  beauty  of 
the  Bible,  and  so  deep  and  fresh  was  his  admira 
tion  that  he  made  the  Bible  a  subject  of  discussion 
and  wonder  among  his  friends.  You  cannot  resist 
a  talker  who  has  enthusiasm  without  rhetoric, 
understanding  without  confusion,  opinions  that  are 
never  didactic,  and  who  is  always  inquiring.  One 
day  he  will  discover  the  primrose  by  the  river's 
brim.  Then  prepare  to  be  charmed.  In  one  of  his 
books  he  speaks  of  the  humility  of  a  lane's  end.  He 
would  brood  for  an  hour  on  that  humility,  and  talk 
about  it  for  a  week. 

He  never  seeks  for  a  style.  The  epigram  does 
not  attract  him.  He  is  content  just  to  tell  the  tale 
of  his  mental  and  imaginative  adventures.  He  loves 
his  thoughts.  They  never  bore  him. 
He  is  an  Irishman.  It  is  difficult  for  a  Saxon  to 
analyse  the  entity  called  George  Moore.  I  have 
always  known  him  as  a  writer  merely,  as  he  would 
like  to  be  known,  and  I  remember  my  astonishment 
one  night  when  he  had  invited  me  to  dine  with  him 
at  an  exclusive  London  club  frequented  by  land 
lords,  county  gentry  and  the  like.  My  astonish 
ment  was  due  to  the  discovery  that  in  this  exclusive 
club  he  was  not  known  as  the  author  of  "Esther 
Walters,"  "Evelyn  Inncss"  and  "Modern  Painting," 
but  as  Moore  of  Moore  Hall,  Ballyglass,  County 


232  Authors  and  I 

Mayo.  Readers  of  his  latest  books  will  recall  that 
Moore  Hall  is  today  something  of  a  white  elephant 
to  George  Moore  of  Ebury  Street  and  author  of 
"The  Untilled  Field." 

Many,  many  years  ago,  at  the  beginning  of  his 
career,  he  studied  painting  in  Paris,  and  mixed 
with  Manet,  Zola  and  others  of  that  great  group. 
History  is  silent  as  to  the  kind  of  pictures  that 
George  Moore  painted,  but  history  is  eloquent  on 
the  fact  that  his  "Modern  Painting"  is  one  of  the 
best  books  on  painting  ever  published  in  the  English 
tongue.  We  find  in  it  the  same  childlike  sincerity, 
integrity  and  awakening  interest  in  art  that  we 
find  in  his  novels  and  essays.  Being  an  Irishman 
he  is  of  course  against  the  government  in  art,  and 
of  course  he  is  limited,  but  his  attraction  is  that 
he  is  candid  in  telling  us  where  his  interest  ceases. 
He  does  not  pretend  to  a  culture  that  he  does  not 
feel,  a  fault  which  most  of  us  try  to  enjoy.  This 
frankness  runs  into  his  conversation.  I  met  him 
last  at  a  private  view  in  London  of  an  exhibition 
packed  with  exciting  pictures  by  ultra  modern  mas 
ters.  He  was  standing  in  the  middle  of  the  gallery 
looking  as  forlorn  as  Little  Bo  Peep  when  she  had 
lost  all  her  sheep.  I  suid,  "Fine  show  this?"  He 
answered  wearily,  but  with  conviction — "My  dear 
friend,  painting  ended  with  Manet.  There  has 
been  nothing  since." 

It  is  said  that  now  he  amuses  himself  urging  his 
friends  to  subscribe  for  his  books  "privately  printed," 
because,  "you  know,  they  always  go  up  in  value." 
That  is  so.  One  of  the  enigmas  of  the  auction 


George  Moore  233 

room  is  that  George  Moore's  works  fetch  a  higher 
price  than  the  works  of  any  living  author.  At  a 
recent  sale  in  New  York  "Pagan  Poems,"  published 
in  1881,  brought  $540,  "Confessions  of  a  Young 
Man,"  $52,  and  "A  Story  Teller's  Holiday"  more 
than  four  times  the  price  it  was  issued  at  in  1918. 
He  has  been  painted  by  William  Orpen  and  Walter 
Sickert,  and  caricatured  by  Max  Beerbohm.  In 
each  case  the  artist  enjoyed  himself  immensely.  Also 
the  public. 


43.    JOHN  MORLEY 

A  CERTAIN  son,  desirous  of  entering 
nalism,  instanced  John  Morley  as  a  light  of 
the  profession,  and  recalled  to  his  father  that  the 
author  of  "On  Compromise"  had  been  editor  of 
the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  and  the  Fortnightly  Re 
view.  The  father  was  impressed,  but  being  a 
careful  man,  he  purchased  "Recollections,"  by  John 
Viscount  Morley,  O.  M.,  Hon.  Fellow  of  All  Souls 
College,  Oxford,  and  after  reading  it  urged  his  son 
to  enter  politics,  and  to  use  journalism  as  an  aid. 
In  John  Morley 's  "Recollections"  there  is  but  a 
meagre  page  and  a  half  of  reference  to  the  Pall 
Mall  Gazette,  which  he  controlled  from  1880  to 
1883,  with  a  complimentary  aside  to  the  redoubt 
able  W.  T.  Stead,  who  was  his  assistant  on  the 
paper.  And  there  is  not  much  more  about  the 
Fortnightly  Review,  which  he  edited  from  1867  to 
1882,  succeeding  George  Henry  Lewes,  "that  won 
der  of  versatile  talents."  No,  although  journalists 
and  literary  men  may  continue  to  claim  John  Mor 
ley  as  one  of  themselves,  his  attitude  toward  us  is 
haughty. 

Statesmanship  has  been  his  career,  literature  a 
refuge,  journalism  an  episode.  As  a  man  of  letters 
he  is  world  famous,  but  although  he  had  regrets 
upon  leaving  literature,  the  lure  of  the  writer  in 
234 


John  M or ley  235 

him  had  no  chance  against  the  lure  of  the  statesman. 
Still  he  could  write  on  the  morrow  of  his  elevation 
to  the  House  of  Lords— "My  inclination,  almost 
to  the  last,  was  to  bolt  from  public  life  altogether, 
for  I  have  a  decent  library  of  books  still  unread, 
and  in  my  brain  a  page  or  two  still  unwritten." 
He  reappeared  among  his  journalistic  acquaintances 
when  he  attended  the  banquet  in  honour  of  Fred 
erick  Greenwood,  originator  and  first  editor  of  the 
Pall  Mall  Gazette,  whose  foresight  induced  the 
government  of  Lord  Beaconsfield  to  acquire  the 
Suez  Canal  shares. 

I  was  close  to  John  Morley  the  night  of  the  Green 
wood  dinner  and  watched  him  closely,  for  he  was 
a  man  who  not  only  had  made  a  great  figure  in  the 
world,  but  whom  everybody  trusted  and  liked — 
even  the  Irish.  A  man  absolutely  without  affecta 
tion,  susceptible  yet  impervious;  in  the  arena,  yet 
not  of  it;  with  a  mobile  face,  strong  features,  a  face 
too  lively  to  be  ascetic,  too  reflective  to  be  dubable. 
He  is  not  an  orator  but  his  words  carry  absolute 
conviction.  You  perceive,  while  he  is  talking,  that 
he  is  speaking  logic.  Of  him  A.  G.  Gardiner  said: 
"In  the  deep-set,  contemplative  eyes  and  indeter* 
minate  chin  you  see  the  man  who  inspires  others  to 
lofty  purpose,  rather  than  the  man  of  action." 
At  a  certain  luncheon  at  Lord  Haldane's  some 
years  later  he  sat  next  to  the  German  Emperor, 
with  Lord  Kitchener  on  the  other  side.  The  faces 
of  these  three  would  have  made  a  curious  composite 
photograph.  Morley,  the  man  of  reflection,  Kitch 
ener,  the  man  of  action,  and  the  head  of  the  Central 


236  Authors  and  I 

Empire  without  any  centre.    That  was  the  occasion 
when  the  Kaiser  told  Lord  Morley  that  he  admired 
a  certain  book  by  Bishop  Boyd  Carpenter  so  much 
that  he  had  it  translated  into  German,  and  that  he 
often  read  pieces  aloud  to  his  ladies  while  they  sat 
stitching    and    knitting.      What,    I    wonder     did 
"Plain  John"— his  own  phrase,  see  p.  252,  Vol.  1 
of  "Recollections"— think  of  the  Kaiser's  admira 
tion  for  Bishop  Boyd  Carpenter? 
John  Morley  was  given  another  title,  on  anot 
occasion,   which  has  remained  with  him.     In  t 
days  of  the  Scots  Observer  I  called  upon  the  editor 
W    E    Henley,  on  a  press  night.     I  asked  him  i 
it  was  a  good  issue.     He  chuckled,  took  a  proof 
from  the  table,   and   pointing  to  the  title  said- 
"That  alone  is  worth  the  money."    It  was  an  article 
on  John  Morley,  headed  "Honest  John." 
Recently  I  related  this  story  to  an  American,  c 
some  importance   in  the  financial  world,  who  sat 
near  me  at  a  public  dinner.      '  'Honest  John 
good  "  he  said.     Then  the  American  proceeded 
talk  about  Roosevelt,  and  I,  my  head  full  of  John 
Morley,  said  to  him,  "Do  you  think  sir,  that  John 
Morley  was  ironical  when,   in  his  'Recollections, 
he  wrote  that  the  two  things  which  seemed  to  him 
the  most  extraordinary  in  America  were  Niagara 
Falls  and   President  Roosevelt?"     The  American 
answered,  "Sure." 

Later  in  the  evening  we  met  in  the  queue  before 
the  cloak  room.  As  it  is  always  more  interesting  to 
talk  of  first-rate  things  than  of  second-rate  things, 
I  said,  as  he  handed  his  check  to  the  attendant— 


John  HI  or  ley  237 

"So  you  are  a  student  of  John  Morley!"  He 
paused;  he  forgot  his  hat  and  coat;  he  murmured — 
"Years  ago  the  direction  of  my  thought,  and  con 
sequently  of  my  actions,  was  settled  by  reading 
'Compromise' ;  yes,  that  is  so,  and  you  may  add  to 
that  remarkable  book  'Voltaire*  and  'Diderot,'  and 
the  'Encyclopaedists.' "  We  bade  each  other  good 
bye.  At  the  door  we  met  again.  There  was  a 
twinkle  in  his  eye  as  he  said  to  me — "Don't  you 
think  Morley  had  'Compromise'  in  his  mind  when 
he  wrote  the  'Life  of  Gladstone'?"  Then  he  shook 
his  head,  cried,  "Ah!  ah!"  and  assisted  his  wife 
into  the  limousine. 

I  submit  that  there  are  hundreds,  perhaps  thousands 
of  men  and  women  who  look  upon  "Compromise" 
as  a  turning  point  in  their  lives.  I  have  just  been 
re-reading  it  in  the  perfect  Eversley  series.  Well, 
I'm  older  now,  and  know  more  about  the  real 
things,  but  how  fine  it  is,  how  fine  after  the  "futile 
impatience"  (Morley's  phrase)  of  Carlyle. 
"Honest  John"  tells  in  his  "Recollections"  the 
story  of  his  elevation  to  the  House  of  Lords.  He 
asked  for  it,  asked  Prime  Minister  Asquith  to 
make  him  a  lord,  and  perhaps  "Honest  John"  was 
the  only  man  in  England  who  could  have  asked 
for  such  a  thing,  and  known  that  his  motive  would 
not  be  misunderstood.  It  was  merely  because  "I 
shall  do  my  work  all  the  better  for  the  comparative 
leisure  of  the  other  place."  Writing  on  April  20, 
1918,  he  remarks:  "There's  as  much  vanity  in 
'Plain  John*  as  in  John  Viscount." 
His  "Recollections"  is  a  book  to  read  and  to  keep. 


238  Authors  and  I 

I  know  no  volume  so  full  of  communing  with  the 
best  thought  and  the  highest  culture.  He  knew 
and  knows  everybody  worth  knowing  from  Mill  to 
Tennyson,  from  Meredith  to  Arthur  Balfour.  He 
has  held  high  offices— twice  Chief  Secretary  for 
Ireland,  Secretary  of  State  for  India,  Lord  Presi 
dent  of  the  Council.  He  was  Lord  President  of 
the  Council  when  war  was  declared  in  1914.  On 
that  day  he  dropped  back  into  private  life.  So  did 
another  John — John  Burns.  When  years  hence, 
the  memoirs  of  that  day  in  August,  1914,  are 
written  some  will  read  the  account  of  the  conver 
sation  when  "Honest  John"  handed  his  resignation 
to  his  old  friend,  Prime  Minister  Asquith. 
There  is  but  one  reference  to  the  war  in  his  "Recol 
lections,"  which  were  published  in  1917.  It  is  the 
opening  sentence  of  the  Introduction — "The  war 
and  our  action  in  it  led  to  my  retirement  from 
public  office." 
The  rest  is  silence. 

And  there  is  one  sentence  in  "On  Compromise" 
which  the  author  chose  as  the  motto  of  the  book, 
and  which — who  will  disagree — is  the  invisible 
motto  engraved  on  John  Morley's  escutcheon.  He 
dug  it  from  the  writings  of  Archbishop  Whately — 
"It  makes  all  the  difference  in  the  world  whether 
we  put  Truth  in  the  first  place  or  in  the  second 
place." 


44.    WALTER  PATER 

1P\ID  I  ever  see  Walter  Pater?     Last  week  I 

••— *  should  have  said  no.  Today  after  reading 
the  Pater  section  in  George  Moore's  "Avowals," 
I  am  inclined  to  answer  yes. 

It  was  at  a  London  dinner  party,  an  unconvivial 
gathering,  one  of  those  solemn  functions  where 
you  feel  that  the  hostess  is  not  entertaining  for 
pleasure:  she  is  paying  social  debts,  and  flattering 
her  husband's  business  friends. 
A  gentleman  sat  opposite  me  whom  I  could  not 
catalogue.  He  seemed  to  be  at  the  dinner  and  yet 
not  of  it:  his  massive  and  immobile  exterior  ap 
peared  to  be  acting  properly  and  formally,  accord 
ing  to  the  laws  of  good  society;  but  it  looked  as  if 
his  actions  were  governed  by  marionette  strings, 
while  his  real  self  was  inactive  and  unmoved  by 
his  surroundings.  This  also  was  the  method  of 
Henry  James,  polite  to  punctilio,  but  giving  very 
little  of  himself  when  he  was  cajoled  into  society  to 
which  he  did  not  react.  Indeed  this  stranger  was 
not  unlike  Henry  James.  They  were  both  examples 
of  the  "joli  laid,"  of  the  ugliness  that  is  not  ugjy, 
because  behind  it  is  mind  and  esprit.  Henry  James 
in  those  days  wore  a  beard:  the  stranger  at  the 
dining  table  had  decorated  himself  with  a  heavy 
moustache,  and  perhaps  he  was,  if  possible,  still 
239 


240  Authors  and  I 

more  magisterially  shy  than  James.     Each   I   am 
sure  called  his  neighbour  Madam,  and  the  manner 
of  each  would  be  correct  and  quite  courteously  dis 
tant  whether  she  was  a  frisky  ingenue  or  a  stern 
dowager.    That  was  years  ago.     I  thought  no  more 
of  the  remote,  massive  and  kindly  stranger  with  the 
heavy    moustache    until    I    read    George    Moore's 
"Avowals,"  which   contains  a  chapter  or  two  on 
Walter  Pater,  written  with  art  and  candour.   Only 
George  Moore  can  write  thus  naively  and  discur 
sively.     He  draws  a  picture  of  Pater  when  the  au 
thor  of  "Imaginary  Portraits"  was  living  in  London 
and  attending  just  such  dinner  parties  as  that  at 
which  I  had  been  present ;  and  the  picture  is  so  clear 
that  I  said  to  myself — the  remote,  massive,  kindly 
stranger  was  certainly  Walter  Pater.  The  author  of 
"Marius  the  Epicurean"  never  used  slang,  but  slang 
is  expressive.   I  will  employ  it.   Pater  was  present  at 
those  forlorn  dinner  parties  because  he  was  eager 
to  "play  the  game,"  to  "do  his  bit."     He  had  not 
only  a  beautiful  but  also  a  conscientious  nature, 
and  Moore  suggests  that  when  Pater  came  to  live 
in  London  he  decided  that  to  avoid  society  would 
neither  be  decorous  nor  seemly.     "He  wanted  to 
live,  to  join  up,  to  walk  in  step,"  so  he  solemnly 
accepted  these  invitations  to  boring  dinners,  talked 
platitudes  to  ingenues  and  dowagers,  lawyers  and 
stockbrokers,  and  all  the  while  he  was  far  away; 
the  real  Pater  was  elsewhere  "burning  with  a  hard 
gem-like    flame,"    in    that    twilight    land    of    the 
Pagan-Christian     world    through     which     Marius 
glided ;  or  in  Greece,  or  with  the  young  Botticelli, 


Walter  Pater  241 

or  with  Wattcau,  or  in  Oxford.  Of  course  he 
returned  to  Oxford,  to  the  city  of  lost  causes  and 
dreaming  spires;  of  course  he  returned  to  his 
dreams,  after  this  attempt  to  "play  the  game"  in 
London.  Oxford  was  his  real  home. 
It  was  from  Brasenose  College,  Oxford,  that  he 
wrote  a  letter  to  "my  dear  audacious  Moore" 
about  the  "Confessions"  (not  Augustine's),  and 
Moore,  who  at  one  time  idolised  Pater,  prints  in 
his  "Avowals"  a  story  about  Pater's  literary  origins, 
and  about  his  style,  "that  style  unlike  all  other 
styles,"  which,  whether  it  be  fiction  or  fact,  is  de 
lightful. 

Someone  had  given  to  George  Moore  a  copy  of 
Goethe's  "Italian  Journey,"  which  he  had  looked 
into  and  wearied  of,  finding  it  pompous  and  empty. 
He  was  about  to  throw  the  book  aside  when  his 
eyes  alighted  on  a  chapter  called  "S.  Philip  Neri." 
He  read  a  little,  read  more,  read  on  with  avidity; 
then  he  allowed  the  volume  to  drop  upon  his  knee 
and  meditated.  George  Moore  is  always  most 
Mooreish  when  meditating  in  Ebury  Street  with  his 
cat  on  his  knee.  His  next  book  should  be  called 
"Meditations." 

He  had  a  vision.  He  saw  Pater  alone  in  a  library: 
he  saw  him  standing  on  the  fifth  step  of  the  ladder 
taking  a  book  from  the  shelf:  he  saw  him  turn  the 
leaves  indifferently,  then  suddenly  fix  his  mind 
acutely  upon  Goethe's  study  of  S.  Philip  Neri.  Im 
mediately  he  knew  the  thoughts  that  were  flocking 
through  Pater's  mind:  they  were  these— Shall  I 
write  an  article  on  Goethe's  style  with  special 


242  Authors  and  I 

reference  to  S.  Philip  Neri,  or  shall  I  say  nothing 
about  it?  Pater  decided  against  writing  about 
S.  Philip  Neri.  He  replaced  the  book,  descended 
cautiously  from  the  ladder  and  looked  anxiously 
around.  Then  he  removed  the  ladder  to  another 
part  of  the  library. 

There  the  vision  ended,  and  George  Moore  said 
to  himself,  "I  have  come  upon  Pater's  origins,  but 
if  I  make  it  known  to  the  world  it  will  be  said  that 
I  have  robbed  Pater  of  part  of  his  glory."  Hardly, 
George!  But  you  have  caused  a  run  on  Goethe's 
"Italian  Journey."  I  have  ordered  a  copy  from  the 
little  bookseller  round  the  corner. 
All  the  week  I  have  been  going  about  with  a  copy 
of  "Marius  the  Epicurean"  in  my  jacket  pocket. 
I  have  been  reading  it  in  tram-cars  and  in  subways, 
on  the  elevated  and  in  elevators,  in  tea  rooms,  and 
while  waiting  for  election  returns.  I  had  read  it 
before,  years  ago,  in  the  sumptuous  edition  of 
Pater's  works  which  I  purchased  feeling  that  no 
page  could  be  too  noble,  no  margins  too  ample,  for 
his  exquisite  prose.  But  that  edition  is  in  England. 
So  I  borrowed  Marius  in  a  crowded  page,  and  a 
cloth  binding.  Nothing,  neither  binding  nor  local 
ity,  can  lessen  its  remote  and  wistful  beauty.  Some 
one  has  said  that  what  distinguishes  fine  from  other 
literature  is  that  the  former  suggests  a  withdrawal 
from  the  common  life.  That  is  why  "Marius"  is 
fine,  and  why  Pater's  literary  life  was  fine. 
They  were  withdrawals  from  the  common  life. 
In  the  wonderful  second  chapter  of  "Marius" 
called  "White-Nights"  there  is  a  passage  that  ex- 


Walter  Pater  243 

plains  this  withdrawal  gently  and  beautifully.  It 
is  his  mother  who  is  speaking  to  Marius.  "A  white 
bird,  she  told  him  once,  looking  at  him  gravely,  a 
bird  which  he  must  carry  in  his  bosom  across  a 
crowded  public  place — his  own  soul  was  like  that! 
would  it  reach  the  hands  of  his  good  genius  on  the 
opposite  side,  unruffled  and  unsoiled?" 
We  all  know  so  much  about  the  Renaissance,  and 
the  great  figures  who  moved  through  it  (indeed  we 
are  all  a  little  tired  of  the  Renaissance),  that  we 
are  apt  to  forget  the  dark  time  before  we  were 
awakened  to  the  Renaissance,  to  forget  that  it  was 
Walter  Pater's  delicate  and  sensitive  artistic  and 
literary  antennae  that  made  the  persons  and  prod 
ucts  of  the  Renaissance  living  and  lovely.  The  pres 
ent  bustling  generation  can  hardly  realise  what  the 
books  of  Pater  meant  to  the  youth  of  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  of  Harvard  and  Yale.  Greece  and 
Italy,  under  the  spell  of  his  interior  imagination, 
became  spiritual  actualities:  he  opened  the  doors  to 
comradeship  in  beauty.  He  understood  what  was 
significant  and  vital,  and  he  could  explain.  No 
book  that  has  ever  been  written  about  Watteau  can 
approach  in  insight  and  charm  his  "Imaginary  Por 
trait"  of  Watteau. 

To  produce  his  finest  work  Pater  had  to  make  a 
withdrawal  from  the  common  life,  to  remove  him 
self  from  the  Present  to  the  Past.  I  have  added 
his  "Essays  from  the  Guardian,"  and  his  "Sketches 
and  Reviews"  to  my  Pater  shelf,  as  I  have  added 
George  Moore's  dinner  story  to  my  Pater  biblio 
mania.  I  place  these  two  Pater  volumes  in  the 


244  Authors  and  I 

dinner-table  category.  He  wrote  the  essays,  con 
tained  in  them,  dear  man,  just  to  keep  in  touch 
with  modern  life:  he  reviewed  the  books  of  his 
friends — Moore,  Symons,  Gosse,  Wilde — and  he 
wrote  on  Flaubert  and  Robert  Elsmere;  but  all 
in  his  dinner-table,  polite  manner.  There  is  no 
withdrawal  in  them.  These  essays,  produced  when 
Pater  was  trying  to  "do  his  bit"  in  modern  literary 
life,  are  not  the  real  Pater.  You  must  seek  him 
in  his  earlier  exclusive  and  seclusive  books:  yes,  and 
also  in  the  famous  passage  on  Mona  Lisa. 
I  cling  tft  that  and  always  shall.  I  go  farther  and 
say  that  Pater's  prose  is  better  than  Leonardo's 
painting. 

Pater  wrote  with  difficulty  in  the  leisure  of  ample 
mornings;  he  corrected  and  re-corrected  through 
quiet  after-noons  with  imperturbable  assiduity,  and  in 
the  evenings,  like  Marius,  he  absorbed  nourishment 
from  other  minds.  He  has  said  in  "The  Renais 
sance"  that  the  tendency  of  all  the  arts  is  to  aspire 
to  the  condition  of  music.  His  jewelled,  consciously 
wrought,  and  beautiful  prose  certainly  has  that 
tendency.  But  his  gift  to  the  world  is  something 
more.  It  lies  in  his  withdrawal,  in  his  communi 
cation  of  something  beyond  and  above  the  insistent 
Present,  something  hidden  yet  revealed  to  initiates. 
Like  his  own  Marius  he  seems  to  be  carrying 
secretly  a  white  bird  in  his  bosom,  always  with 
him,  always  unruffled  and  unsoiled,  across  the  pub 
lic  places. 

So  much  is  this  sense  of  withdrawal  needed  that,  if 
I  had  my  way,  I  would  make  every  Mayor  and 


Jl' alter  Pater  245 

Governor,  before  he  is  allowed  to  take  office, 
whether  Democrat  or  Republican,  sign  a  paper, 
saying  that  he  had  read  recently  every  word  of 
"Marius  the  Epicurean." 


A  white  bird,  a  bird  which  he  must  carry  in  his 
bosom.  , 


45.     A.  T.  QUILLER-COUCH 

T  PERMIT  myself  to  think  of  him  as  "Q."  So 
•*-  he  signed  in  The  Speaker  during  the  early  nine 
ties.  This  signature  appeared,  week  by  week,  at 
the  foot  of  an  essay  story — racy,  humorous, 
pointed,  brief.  I  thought  them  fine  at  the  time: 
these  swift  studies  in  characterisation  seemed  to 
promise  that  one  day  "Q"  would  become  a  fore 
most  novelist,  a  sort  of  second  Robert  Louis  Steven 
son. 

He  did  not.  He  tarries.  As  a  novelist  he  has  not 
conquered.  Others  have  passed  him,  and  I  fancy 
that,  since  "True  Tilda"  issued  about  ten  years  ago, 
he  has  gradually  eased  away  from  the  fiction  market. 
Many  novels  stand  to  his  name.  I  remember  read 
ing,  with  rather  an  effort,  "The  Splendid  Spur," 
"Hetty  Wesley,"  and  "Shining  Ferry,"  and  I 
studied  with  much  care  his  conclusion  of  "St.  Ives," 
which  Stevenson  left  unfinished.  It  was  a  deft 
piece  of  work,  the  mechanics  faultless,  but  it  was 
not  Stevenson.  He  is  not  a  great  romancer:  he 
lacks  Stevenson's  lilt  and  background ;  and  his  child 
like  joy  is  metallic:  it  does  not  ooze  out  in  the  way 
of  his  master.  As  a  romancer  I  submit  "QJ>  has 
not  found  his  centre. 

Is  he  a  poet,  is  poetry  his  true  centre?     I   think 

not.     He  has  written  some  charming  and   pretty 

246 


A.   T.  Quiller-Couch  247 

poetry,  he  has  made  some  neat  and  witty  parodies 
(some  think  that  they  are  better  than  Owen  Sea 
man's),  but  his  heartiest  admirers  would  not  label 
him  a  great  poet. 

Let  us  look  at  the  man  himself  and  see  if  we  can 
discover  what  is  "Q's"  line  in  literature.  He  is  a 
stay-at-home.  For  a  few  years  he  tried  London, 
but  in  1891  he  returned  to  Cornwall  where  he  has 
lived  ever  since.  The  first  book  he  published  after 
his  return  to  Cornwall  was  "I  Saw  Three  Ships." 
Ships  he  can  see  from  his  windows  at  the  Haven, 
Fowey,  Cornwall,  adventuring  out  from  Plymouth, 
or  Plymouth  bound.  Ships  are  his  companions;  he 
is  a  great  yachtsman,  and  his  club  is  the  Royal 
Fowey  Yacht  Club.  Are  we  then  to  suppose  that 
his  centre  is  yachting?  Hardly.  Yachting  is  his 
recreation. 

When  I  made  a  walking  tour  through  Cornwall 
and  reached  Fowey  early  on  a  spring  evening  my 
fiwt  employment,  after  a  bite  of  supper,  was  to 
call  upon  "Q."  We  sat  in  his  library  and  I  won 
dered  mildly  at  the  number  of  books  owned  by 
this  tall,  slight,  blonde,  athletic-looking  writer  who, 
in  spite  of  his  tan  breeziness,  and  Yo,  Heave  Ho  air, 
spoke  like  a  scholar.  Fleet  Street  has  left  little 
impression  upon  him.  Oxford  has.  Scholarship 
might  have  tamed  and  tied  him,  as  it  tames  and  ties 
so  many;  his  learned  honours  are  numerous:  M.A. 
Oxford,  M.A.  Cambridge,  Litt.D.  Bristol,  but 
like  G.  W.  Steevens  academic  honours  have  been 
powerless  to  stultify  the  essential  "Q."  He  is  of 
the  Stevenson  school — gay,  original,  with  flashes  of 


248  Authors  and  I 

insight,  wearing  his  learning  lightly  and  bend 
ing  it  to  bright  use  in  the  give  and  take  of  the 
day's  work.  While  we  sat  talking  in  his  library 
above  the  Cornish  sea,  hearing  his  rapid  comments 
on  books  and  thought,  I  said  to  myself:  "You  are 
a  born  writer,  and  you  could  write  decently  and 
daringly  on  anything;  you  could  turn  out  a  lyric 
or  an  epic,  a  paragraph  or  a  novel  of  a  couple  of 
hundred  thousand  words,  but  at  heart  you  are  a 
creative  critic,  a  stimulating  guide  and  brotherly 
friend  to  all  who  would  shape  their  thought  and 
lives  from  a  study  of  the  best  literature.  Yes,  you 
are  a  creative  critic.  That  is  your  literary  centre." 
If  anyone  wants  to  be  convinced  of  this  let  him 
read  Quiller-Couch's  "On  the  Art  of  Writing"  and 
particularly  "Studies  in  Literature." 
Since  1918  when  it  was  published  by  the  Cam 
bridge  University  Press,  "Studies  in  Literature"  has 
been  my  chief  bedside  book.  Dip  into  it  where  I 
will,  a  page  here,  a  page  there,  I  always  find  it  tonic. 
Some  of  the  essays  were  delivered  to  his  class  at 
Cambridge.  Fortunate  undergraduates!  Your 
fathers,  by  Cam  and  Isis,  heard  Ruskin  and  Mat 
thew  Arnold:  you  have  heard  one  who  is  worthy, 
as  lecturer,  to  rank  with  them.  Who  that  heard 
it  can  forget  his  indignation  that  anybody  should 
call  a  "sloppy  sentence  good  enough" ;  and  who, 
having  heard  it,  can  forget  his  illustration  and  com 
ment  :  "I  desire  that  among  us  we  make  it  impos 
sible  to  do  again  what  our  Admiralty  did  with  the 
battle  of  Jutland,  to  win  a  victory  at  sea  and  lose 
it  in  a  despatch." 


A.   T.  Quiller-Coiich  249 

And  the  Rhymer,  the  budding  Cambridge  poet, 
hearing  the  following — would  he  not  hurry  home, 
with  quick  feet,  to  re-fashion  his  verses? 

Gentlemen — as  your  noun  is  but  a  name  and  your  adjec 
tive  but  an  adjunct  to  a  name,  while  along  your  verb 
runs  the  nerve  of  life;  so,  if  you  would  write  melodiously, 
throughout  vowels  rr.jst  the  melody  run. 

And  this  about  those  pedagogues  who  classify  poets 
into  the  Classic  and  the  Romantic  School — is  it  not 
final? 

"The  play's  the  thing."  "Hamlet,"  ''Lytidas,"  or  "The 
Cenci"  is  the  thing.  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Shelley  did  not 
write  "classicism"  or  "romanticism."  They  wrote  "Ham 
let,"  "Lycidas,"  "The  Cenci.1 

And  would  not  this  burst  of  praise,  no  qualifications 
here,  send  a  literary  undergraduate,  with  eager  eyes 
and  rising  pulse,  to  "the  great  Donne,  the  real 
Donne" — 

.  .  .  his  Sermons,  which  contain  (as  I  hold)  the  most 
magnificent  prose  ever  uttered  from  an  English  pulpit,  if 
not  the  most  magnificent  prose  ever  spoken  in  our  tongue. 

This  appears  in  the  essay  on  "Some  Seventeenth 
Century  Poets."  The  thoughts  of  youth  are  long, 
long  thoughts,  and  I  can  well  imagine  an  under 
graduate  who  heard  this  lecture  never  losing, 
throughout  his  life  time,  the  memory  of  how  Donoe, 
Herbert,  Vaughan,  Traherne,  Crashaw,  and  others 
swung  our  noble  tongue,  soaring  as  they  shaped  it. 
It  is  like  drinking  from  a  deep  well. 


250  /jitthors  and  I 

And  if  the  reader,  having  read  some  of  "Q's"  novels, 
and  knowing  how  alert  and  lively  is  his  fancy, 
desires  something  more  than  creative  criticism  of 
the  best  of  the  past,  let  him  absorb  the  essay  called 
"The  Commerce  of  Thought,"  wherein  "Q"  lets 
his  imagination  play  over  the  old  trade  routes. 

You  will  see,  as  this  little  planet  revolves  back  out  of  the 
shadow  of  night  to  meet  the  day,  little  threads  pushing 
out  over  its  black  spaces — dotted  ships  on  wide  seas, 
crawling  trains  of  emigrant  waggons,  pioneers,  tribes  on 
the  trek,  olive-gatherers,  desert  caravans,  dahabeeyahs 
pushing  up  the  Nile  ...  the  trade  routes. 

So  he  worms  into  this  fascinating  subject  till  he 
comes  to  his  main  thesis — the  wanderings,  alight- 
ings,  and  fertilising  of  man's  thought. 
As  my  eyes  roam  these  pages  they  fall  upon  a  foot 
note — just  a  footnote,  and  you  know  what  foot 
notes  usually  are.  What  do  you  think  of  this  foot 
note?  Does  it  not  set  the  imagination  stirring? 

It  is  observable  how  many  of  the  great  books  of  the 
world— the  "Odyssey,"  the  "^neid,"  "The  Canterbury 
Tales,"  "Don  Quixote,"  "The  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  "Gil 
Bias,"  "Pickwick,"  and  "The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth"— 
are  books  of  wayfaring. 

I  repeat:  it  is  in  creative  criticism  that  "Q"  has 
found  his  centre.  Let  others  busy  themselves  with 
the  novel.  It  is  his  destiny  to  deal  creatively  with 
the  higher  branch,  with  poetry,  and  the  literature 
that  is  safe  beyond  the  phases  and  fashions  of  our 
day.  He  makes  us  long  to  read  the  best ;  he  makes 


A.   T.  Quiller-Conch  251 

us  lament  that  we  pretend  we  have  no  time  for 
that  great  adventure. 

Undergraduates  and  graduates  owe  him  another 
debt.  He  gave  us  the  "Oxford  Book  of  English 
Verse."  My  copy  is  falling  to  pieces  through 
much  reading.  It  was  bought  in  1901:  it  is 
scrawled  with  markings  and  comments.  Among 
them  are  these:  that  the  anonymous  poem  "Non 
Nobis"  is  by  Harry  Cust,  and  the  last  poem  in  the 
book,  "Dominus  Illuminatio  Mea,"  is  by  R.  D. 
Blackmore,  author  of  "Lorna  Doone."  It  was 
found  among  his  papers. 

He,  like  "Q,"  was  an  open  air  man,  and  when  I 
think  of  Quiller-Couch  and  Blackmore  I  see  the 
Doone  Valley,  and  the  Haven  of  Fowey. 


T 


46.     SIEGFRIED  SASSOON 

HIS  soldier-poet  is  a  bad  lecturer;  but  it  is 
the  kind  of  badness  that  delights  an  American 
audience  accustomed  to  a  standardised  efficiency  in 
lecturing.     He  is  shy  on  the  platform;  he  does  not 
know  how  to  stand  properly ;  he  mixes  up  his  points; 
and  when  he  reads  his  poems,  he  reads  to  himself, 
not  to  the  man  at  the  top  of  the  top  gallery.    Yet 
he  "puts  it  over"  because  he  is  sincere,  because  he 
has  something  to  say,  and  because  he  laughs  at  him 
self.    So  his  audience  is  tense  for  half  the  time,  and 
for  the  other  half  is  rippling  with  laughter.    A  lady 
sitting  next  to  me  during  one  of  his  lectures  on  war 
poetry  whispered:     "I  shall  never  again  say  that 
Englishmen   have  not   a  sense   of   humour."     To 
which  I  replied:     "Why  did  you  ever  say  it?" 
Siegfried  Sassoon,  being  young,  is  not  enthusiastic 
about  the  elder,  contemporary  British  poets;  but  he 
has  one  great  admiration — Thomas  Hardy.     I  sus 
pect  that  as  a  poet  he  ranks  Hardy  higher  than 
anybody  in  the  world.     His  admirations  among  the 
younger    poets    include     Rupert     Brooke,    Julian 
Grenfell,   and    Charles   Sawley.      His  high   appre 
ciation  of  the  ironists  and  satirists  includes  Richard 
Aldington,    Herbert  Reed,  J.  C.   Squire,  and  Os 
wald  Sitwell.     Then  being  obliged  to  speak  about 
himself,  he  did  so  briefly  with  a  blush  and  a  pro- 
252 


Siegfried  S as so  on  253 

test.  Seated  at  the  table  he  read  some  of  his  nice 
nature  poems,  and  some  of  his  bitter,  disillusioned 
war  poems. 

Had  there  been  no  war  Siegfried  Sassoon  might 
have  remained  just  what  he  was  before  the  war — a 
minor  poet,  in  love  with  life,  fond  of  music,  keen 
about  hunting  and  tennis.  There  are  many  such 
in  England.  This  tall,  alert  young  man,  of  Anglo- 
Jewish  stock,  his  mother  a  sister  of  the  capable  sculp 
tor,  Hamo  Thornycroft,  educated  at  Marlborough 
and  Oxford,  wrote  his  youthful  poems,  like  so  many 
others;  but  being  rather  modest  he  printed  them 
for  private  circulation  only.  You  may  guess  what 
they  were  like  by  their  titles:  "Twelve  Sonnets," 
"Melodies,"  "An  Ode  for  Music,"  "Hyacinth," 
"Apollo  in  Doelyrium."  Masefield's  success  influ 
enced  him.  His  poem  "The  Old  Huntsman"  has 
something  of  Masefield  and  something  more.  Pro 
test  is  its  note.  The  yeast  of  protest  against  com 
fortable  conventions  was  already  beginning  to  work 
in  this  athletic,  life-loving  youth. 
Then  the  war  broke  out,  and  Siegfried  Sassoon,  like 
other  young  men  of  spirit,  rushed  to  the  colours, 
knowing  that  this  was  a  war  for  righteousness  and 
freedom,  and  that  it  had  to  be  fought  out  to  the 
bitter  end.  The  war  changed  him.  Like  the  others 
he  went  gaily,  his  head  high;  and  we  who  stayed 
at  home  prayed  that  it  would  be  the  last  war,  the 
war  that  would  end  war;  and  we  wondered,  with 
nice  anxiety,  what  would  be  the  effect  of  the  horror 
and  brutality  of  war  upon  the  artist-soldier,  upon 
poets,  painters,  and  musicians. 


254  Authors  and  I 

As  everyone  knows,  one  of  the  minor  effects  of  the 
war  was  to  open  the  verse  and  poetry  floodgates. 
Every  newspaper,  every  magazine,  published  war 
poems  by  stay-at-homes  and  soldiers.  Soon  Sieg 
fried  Sassoon's  poems  began  to  appear  in  such  jour 
nals  as  the  Cambridge  Magazine,  The  Nation, 
The  New  Statesman.  He  had  seen  war,  and  he 
was  in  no  mood  to  temporise  with  it,  or  to  gloss  its 
beastliness. 

His  poems  shocked  many  people:  they  horrified  those 
who  clung  to  the  idea  that  there  might  be  some 
thing  of  splendour  and  purification  in  modern  war 
fare.  There  were  poets  who  sang  that  side  of  it; 
but  to  Sassoon  the  rivulets  of  gallantry7  and  sacrifice 
were  swept  out  of  sight  by  the  torrents  of  horror, 
misery,  and  brutality.  Those  who  read  his  poems 
said  to  themselves,  with  all  the  emphasis  of  which 
they  were  capable:  "This  vile  thing  called  war 
shall  never  happen  again." 

His  published  works  are  three:  "Counter-Attack," 
"The  Old  Huntsman,"  and  "The  Picture  Show." 
One  does  not  read  them  for  pleasure:  one  reads  as 
a  warning,  as  a  poetical  uncovering  of  a  horrible 
evil  that  must  be  exorcised  from  man's  conscious 
ness.  His  poems  are  statements  red  from  the  con 
flict,  and  so  vivid  are  they  that  the  pleasanter 
pieces  in  these  volumes  seem  discoloured  by  the 
smoke  and  flame  of  outrageous  war.  Rough,  rude, 
and  slangy  are  many  of  the  poems,  for  Sassoon  is 
a  realist  and  fighting  men  are  fighting  men.  But 
he  can  be  calm  and  cool  when  he  likes,  as  in 


Siegfried  S  as  soon  255 


A  MYSTIC  AS  SOLDIER 

I  lived  my  days  apart, 

Dreaming  fair  songs  of  God, 
By  the  glory  in  my  heart 

Covered  and  crowned  and  shod. 

Now  God  is  in  the  strife, 

And  I  must  seek  Him  there, 
Where  death  outnumbers  life, 

And  fury  smites  the  air. 

I  walk  the  secret  way 

With  anger  in  my  brain, 
O  music,  through  my  clay, 

When  will  you  sound  again? 

This  poet  soldier  who  has  raised  his  voice  so  poig 
nantly  and  angrily  against  war,  who  cries  again 
and  again,  "War  doesn't  ennoble:  it  degrades," 
saw  four  and  a  hilf  years  of  fighting  in  France  and 
Palestine.  The  Military  Cross  is  his.  In  America 
he  lectured  and  read  his  poems,  insisting  upon  the 
criminality  of  even  speaking  of  a  future  war.  "It 
never  must  happen  again."  That  is  the  cry  of  a 
poet  who  knows  what  war  is. 


47.     GEORGE  BERNARD  SHAW 

TO  me  a  new  volume  of  "Plays  with  Prefaces," 
by  George  Bernard  Shaw,  is  an — event.  In 
him  I  find  those  high  forms  of  pleasure — mental 
stimulus,  inward  laughter,  and  the  truth,  the  truth 
as  he  sees  it,  unvarnished  and  undecorated.  What 
matter  if  I  do  not  agree  with  him?  It  is  G.  B.  S. 
I  am  reading,  not  myself. 

How  barren  the  modern  stage  would  be  without 
Ibsen  and  Shaw!  Actors,  the  right  kind,  idolise 
Ibsen  and  Shaw.  Their  characters  being  real, 
saying  real  things,  act  themselves.  Shaw's  plays, 
to  his  own  astonishment,  and  to  everybody  else's, 
have  become  popular. 

In  the  second  year  of  the  war  two  plays  were 
being  performed  in  the  Pier  theatres  of  a  south  coast 
watering  place.  One  was  a  revue — the  usual  inane 
vulgarity.  I  attended  the  performance.  The  house 
was  half  empty,  and  the  audience  tepid  and  inat 
tentive.  I  left  before  the  end,  while  a  boisterous 
chorus  was  singing  a  boisterous  song.  The  next 
night  I  attended  the  performance  at  the  other  Pier 
theatre.  It  was  "Man  and  Superman,"  by  George 
Bernard  Shaw.  The  house  was  packed,  every  point 
was  taken;  throughout  there  was  laughter,  applause, 
and  the  tensity  of  attention  that  informs  an  au 
dience  with  purpose  and  power.  "Give  the  public 
256 


George  Bernard  Shaw  257 

good  stuff,"  said  I  to  my  companion,  "and  they  will 
react  to  it." 

G.  B.  S.  has  tried  everything  except  sport  (he  gives 
his  Recreation  as  "everything  except  sport")  and 
succeeded  in  everything.  When,  in  1898,  he  penned 
his  journalistic  Valedictory  in  the  pages  of  the  Satur 
day  Revinv  he  could  look  back  upon  ten  years  of 
continuous  weekly  criticism  of  the  arts  of  music  and 
the  drama,  and  still  more  years  of  Fabian  Society 
work,  public  speaking  and  pamphleteering.  And 
before  that  there  were  the  novels,  "The  Irrational 
Knot,"  "Love  Among  the  Artists,"  "Cashel  By 
ron's  Profession,"  and  "An  Unsocial  Socialist." 
After  ten  years  of  criticism  of  the  arts  "Shaw  gave 
up  exhausted,"  says  Mr.  Achibald  Henderson  in  his 
Life  of  G.  Bernard  Shaw,  perhaps  the  best  Life 
of  a  living  man  that  has  ever  been  written.  Of 
course  G.  B.  S.  had  a  hand  in  it.  Frankly,  openly, 
quizzically  he  gives  personal  attention  to  all  matters 
of  personal  publicity.  But  Shaw  never  "gave  up 
exhausted."  This  non-mcat-cater,  rion-smoker, 
whose  beverage  is  water,  was  never  exhausted. 
Neither  his  mind  nor  his  body  ever  rest.  That 
Valedictory  simply  meant  that  he  was  about  to  turn 
from  serious  criticism  to  serious  creation.  He  had 
done  what  he  meant  to  do— he  had  forced  upon 
the  world  "that  most  successful  of  all  his  fictions — 
G.  B.  S."  We,  in  London,  who  had  followed  him, 
who  had  heard  him  speak  at  Fabian  meetings,  who 
had  shouted  to  the  Pan-like,  mustardy-grey  figure 
to  get  upon  his  legs,  who  could  quote  passages  from 
"The  Quintessence  of  Ibsen  ism"  and  "The  perfect 


258  Authors  and  I 

Wagnerite" ;  we  who  knew  of  the  basal  seriousness 
that  underlay  his  levity  were  delighted  with  the 
following  passage  from  the  Valedictory  in  the  Satur 
day,  but  I  wondered  then,  and  I  wonder  still,  how 
the  readers  of  that  last  stronghold  of  High  British 
Toryism  took  it. 

"For  ten  years  past,  with  an  unprecedented  per 
tinacity  I  have  been  dinning  into  the  public  head  that 
I  am  an  extraordinarily  witty,  brilliant,  and  clever 
man.  That  is  now  part  of  the  public  opinion  of 
England ;  and  no  power  on  earth  will  ever  change 
it.  I  may  dodder  and  dote.  I  may  pot-boil  and 
platitudinise;  I  may  become  the  butt  and  chopping- 
block  of  all  the  bright,  original  spirits  of  the  rising 
generation ;  but  my  reputation  shall  not  suffer ;  it  is 
built  up  fast  and  solid,  like  Shakespeare's,  on  an 
impregnable  basis  of  dogmatic  reiteration." 
For  years  he  had  been  regarded  by  one  section  of 
the  public  as  a  prophet,  by  the  other  as  a  buffoon. 
It  was  the  stupidity  of  the  latter  section  that  des 
ignated  him  a  buffoon.  Anybody  with  any  kind  of 
instinct  knew  that  under  his  raillery,  levity,  and 
determination  to  build  up  the  G.  B.  S.  legend  was 
grim  seriousness  and  implacable  integrity.  Why, 
he  himself  gave  himself  away  again  and  again. 
"Waggery  as  a  medium  is  invaluable,"  he  once  ex 
plained.  "My  method,  you  will  have  noticed,  is  to 
take  the  utmost  trouble  to  find  the  right  thing  to 
say,  and  then  say  it  with  the  utmost  levity.  And 
all  the  time  the  real  joke  is  that  I  am  in  earnest." 
After  years  of  thought  about  G.  B.  S.,  that  learned 
critic  and  former  Oxford  Don,  Mr.  W.  L.  Court- 


George  Bernard  Shan-  259 

ncy,  remarked:  "The  annoying  part  of  Mr.  G. 
Bernard  Shaw's  career  is  that  he  is  more  often  right 
than  wrong — right  in  substance,  though  often 
wrong  in  manner,  saying  true  things  with  the  most 
ludicrous  air  in  the  world,  as  if  he  were  merely 
enjoying  himself  at  our  expense." 
Which  he  was,  and  is. 

As  a  journalist  he  was  delightful.  He  made  writing 
about  music  human ;  he  pointed  the  way  to  the 
knowledge  that  organists  are  real  people  who  live 
in  houses,  and  often  have  wives  anu  children.  He 
was  Corno  di  Bassetto  of  the  Star,  that  pioneer 
rocket  of  the  new  journalism,  set  flying  by  T.  P. 
O'Connor,  who  when  he  engaged  G.  B.  S.  to  do 
the  music,  whispered  to  him,  "Say  what  you  like, 
but  don't  tell  us  anything  about  Bach  in  B  minor." 
And  C.  di  B.  said  just  what  he  liked,  and  people 
who  had  never  read  a  word  about  music  read  the 
Star  columns  regularly,  and  spoke  ecstatically  about 
Shaw's  cleverness  in  concealing  his  ignorance.  The 
joke  was  that  Shaw  knew  as  much,  perhaps  more, 
about  music  than  anybody  in  London.  He  himself 
described  Corno  di  Bassetto's  column  as  "a  mix 
ture  of  triviality,  vulgarity,  farce  and  tomfoolery 
with  genuine  criticism." 

His  vogue,  his  great  popularity,  was  due  to  the  fact 
that  he  was  always  amusing.  Make  people  laugh 
intellectually,  and  they  will  forgive  you  anything. 
He  would  instill  humour  into  the  drycst,  abstrusest 
subject.  One  Sunday  afternoon  in  December,  pass* 
ing  St.  James'  Hall  in  Piccadilly,  I  noticed  that  at 
4  p.  m.  G.  Bernard  Shaw  was  announced  to  speak 


260  Authors  and  I 

on  "Education,"  admission  one  shilling.  I  became 
one  of  the  crowded  audience,  and  listened  for  an 
hour  and  a  half,  without  effort,  without  my  thought 
once  wandering,  and  with  many  explosions  of 
laughter.  He  told  us  merely  about  his  own  educa 
tion,  and  drew  a  moral,  and  the  moral  was  that  his 
education  began  when  he  left  school.  When  it  was 
over  I  happened  to  meet  him  outside  on  the  way 
home,  and  said:  "Shaw,  it  cost  me  a  bob,  but  it 
was  worth  it." 

He  smiled ;  he  had  a  ready  smile. 
I  can  see  him  now  walking  rapidly  about  the 
platform,  the  tall,  lanky,  springing  figure,  the 
mustardy-grey  suit  that  he  always  wore,  the  wide, 
heavy,  health-boots,  the  scraggiy  reddish-brown 
beard  and  hair  (now  turning  white),  the  high  brow 
and  the  clear,  grey-blue  eyes  that  can  be  amused, 
alert,  penetrating,  but  never  angry.  He  always 
looked  the  same  (I  believe  since  he  married  he 
does  sometimes  wear  a  dress  suit),  walking  furiously 
in  the  street,  or  coming  to  a  public  dinner  where 
he  had  been  announced  to  speak,  ridiculously  late, 
slipping  in  with  the  sweets  so  as  to  avoid  the  odour, 
to  him  horrible,  of  the  joint  course. 
He  has  a  ready  smile.  He  supers  fools  gladly  be 
cause,  I  suppose,  nothing  human  is  alien  to  his  sym 
pathy.  Once  the  ready  smile,  once  only  in  all  my 
knowledge  of  him,  did  not  lighten  his  pallor.  It 
was  at  an  exhibition  of  caricatures  by  Max  Beer- 
bohm;  one  of  them  showed  a  cartoon  of  G.  B.  S. 
standing  on  his  head  on  the  largest  rug  in  a  draw 
ing  room,  his  long  legs  nearly  touching  the  ceiling. 


George  Bernard  Shaw  261 

Underneath  was  this:  "When  I  left  London  two 
years  ago  the  dear  man  was  standing  on  his  head. 
On  my  return  I  find  him  in  the  same  position."  I 
drew  Mr.  Shaw's  attention  to  this  with  the  words, 
"Look!  Max  has  got  you  this  time."  G.  B.  S. 
examined  the  cartoon  carefully  and  passed  on  with 
out  smiling. 

Those  who  want  George  Bernard  Shaw  only  in 
serious  mood  can  find  plenty  of  solid  seriousness  in 
his  writings.  "The  Showing-Up  of  Blanco  Posnet" 
was  banned  by  the  censor  because  it  deals  with 
realities.  The  censor  felt  that  even  at  the  cost  of 
looking  foolish,  he  must  protect  those  who  cling  to 
unrealities.  Au  fond  it  is  a  very  serious  play. 
"There's  no  good  and  bad,"  says  Posnet,  "but  by 
Jiminy,  gents,  there's  a  rotten  game,  and  there's 
a  great  game.  I  played  the  rotten  game;  but  the 
great  game  was  played;  and  now  I'm  for  the  great 
game  every  time.  Amen." 

And  what  do  you  think  of  this,  the  real  Shaw: 
"We  have  no  more  right  to  consume  happiness 
without  producing  it  than  we  have  to  consume 
wealth  without  producing  it." 
And  of  this,  also  the  real  Shaw,  in  a  letter  he 
wrote  to  Tolstoy:  "I  think  the  root  reason  why  we 
do  not  do  as  our  fathers  advise  us  to  do  is  that  we 
none  of  us  want  to  be  like  our  fathers,  the  inten 
tion  of  the  Universe  being  that  we  should  be  like 
God." 

P.  S.  As  to  Mr.  Shaw's  opinions  about  the 
late  Great  War — oh,  perhaps  I  should  have  ex 
plained  earlier  that  he  is  an  Irishman. 


48.    J.  C.  SNAITH 

IT  is  possible  for  an  author's  books  to  be  well 
known,  and  he  himself  quite  unknown.     This, 
undoubtedly,  is  the  right  way  for  an  author  to  con 
duct  himself.    Often,  ultimately,  this  way  pays  bet 
ter  than  the  way  of  publicity. 

I  know  nothing  about  John  Collis  Snaith  outside 
his  books.  Do  you?  I  am  a  little  curious.  He 
does  not  help  my  curiosity.  In  "Who's  Who,"  the 
biographies  of  which  are  written  by  the  subjects 
themselves,  there  is  a  list  of  a  dozen  of  his  works. 
Printed  before  that  list  is  his  biography  in  three 
words — "Writer  of  fiction."  At  the  end  of  the  list 
is  his  address,  "Care  of  John  Murray."  This  is 
biography  Bovrilised ;  this  is  a  shining  example  of 
the  modesty  of  authorship. 

Readers  of  books  are  the  best  advertisers  of  books. 
They  talk;  they  carry  the  good  tidings  of  a  good 
book.  Fourteen  years  ago  a  certain  painter,  to 
whom  a  book  is  usually  a  bore,  began  to  bewilder 
his  friends  with  praise  of  Snaith's  "Broke  of  Coven- 
den."  So  insistent  was  his  commendation,  in  the 
fishing  village  frequented  by  painters  where  he  lived, 
that  a  dozen  people  acquired  "Broke  of  Coven- 
den."  I  was  among  the  twelve,  and  was  delighted 
with  the  spirit  and  wisdom  of  the  tale. 
Three  years  ago  a  daughter  of  my  acquaintance 
262 


/.  C.  Snaith  263 

gave,  as  a  Christmas  present  to  a  mother  of  my 
affection,  a  copy  of  "The  Sailor"  by  Snaith.  "Why 
did  you  choose  that?"  I  asked.  "Because," 
answered  the  daughter,  "I  like  it  better  than  any 
other  book."  I  borrowed  "The  Sailor"  from  the 
mother  and  was  much  interested  and  entertained. 
John  Collis  Snaith  continued  to  remain,  so  far  as 
I  was  concerned,  in  complete  retirement.  His  books 
circulated,  he  hid.  In  the  summer  of  1919  every 
one  who  skimmed  the  book  columns  of  the  news 
papers  was  aware  that  a  new  war  novel  by  J.  C. 
Snaith  called  "The  Undefeated"  (in  America) 
was  receiving  a  "good  press."  Every  reviewer  was 
pleased.  Some  were  enthusiastic.  Not  one  had 
anything  unkind  to  say,  a  sign  that  it  was  a  real 
book,  striking  a  human  note. 

I  have  a  friend  who  does  not  read  much;  he  has 
not  the  time;  but  he  buys  the  notable  books  of  the 
day,  and  arranges  them  upon  his  shelves,  purposing 
to  read  them  during  his  vacation  which,  of  course, 
he  never  does.  From  his  shelves  on  Independence 
Day  I  withdrew  "The  Undefeated,"  and,  it  being 
a  holiday,  carried  it  home  and  began  to  read.  I 
perused  half  of  it  without  stirring,  oblivious  to  time, 
so  that  I  was  surprised  when,  at  half  past  6  ap 
peared  the  companion  who  had  arranged  to  accom 
pany  me  to  the  Victory  Celebration  in  the  Stadium 
of  the  College  of  the  City  of  New  York.  "What," 
I  cried,  "is  it  half  past  6  already?" 
A  summer  night,  a  daffodil  sky,  and  nearly  20,000 
people  in  that  vast  Stadium!  I  sat  on  one  of  the 
topmost  stone  benches  upon  which  the  sun  had  been 


264  Authors  and  I 

blazing  all  day,  and  in  my  hand  was  "The  Un 
defeated,"  for  there  would  be  a  long  tram-ride 
home.  The  book  allied  itself  to  the  Victory  Cele 
bration  in  the  Stadium.  Each  was  an  expression 
of  the  undefeated ;  each  was  an  aspect  of  victor}', 
the  one  a  whirlwind  of  rejoicing,  the  other  a  still 
small  voice  of  thankfulness.  When  a  company 
of  marines  marched  into  the  arena,  and  the  audience 
shouted,  and  the  boy  scouts  saluted,  and  the  nurses 
waved  handkerchiefs,  I  rejoiced  with  them,  for  is 
there  anywhere  a  finer  sight  than  marines  in  their 
light  yellowy  marching  kit?  They  moved  like  one 
man;  their  faces  were  indistinguishable  as  they 
marched  to  the  wailing  pride  of  Sousa's  "The  Stars 
and  Stripes  Forever."  As  I  watched  them,  symbols 
of  the  Victory  of  Right,  I  clutched  the  book  closer, 
and  thought  of  a  character  in  its  pages,  one  Private, 
afterward  Corp.  William  Hollis,  who  passed  from 
defeat  to  victory,  who  came  through  the  war — un 
defeated. 

Thus  literature  may  be  allied  to  life.  The 
Pageant  and  the  Book  were  one,  working  toward 
one  end.  There  was  time  to  reflect,  for  the  pro 
ceedings  included  speeches.  In  the  book  there  is  a 
speech  that  is  the  right  kind  of  speech,  but  the 
addresses  at  the  Victory  Pageant  were  the  wrong 
kind.  Eminent  gentlemen  declaimed  the  obvious.  I 
know  it  was  the  obvious  because  the  speeches  were 
reported  at  length  in  the  next  day's  papers,  and  I 
am  sure  that  there  was  not  one  person  in  that  vast 
audience  who  heard  one  word.  The  20,000  fanned 
themselves  and  cheered;  they  cheered  vociferously, 


/.  C.  Snalth  265 

wildly,  because  they  wanted  the  speeches  to  end 
and  Tschaikowsky's  "1812"  overture  to  begin.  But 
the  eminent  speakers  thought  it  was  their  oratory 
that  was  being  cheered.  So  they  spread  themselves, 
amplified  their  periods,  whereupon  the  audience 
cheered  louder  than  ever.  It  was  almost  amusing. 
And  while  the  torrent  of  words  rushed  forth  in 
dumb  show  I  read  the  speech  that  the  Mayor  of 
Blackhamptbn  makes  on  page  282  of  "The  Unde 
feated."  It  was  a  great  occasion.  Usually  he  was 
a  facile  speaker,  but  for  a  special  reason  his  powers 
threatened  to  desert  him  now.  He  recovered  him 
self,  and  at  last  slowly  and  grimly  the  great  voice 
boomed  out,  "Ladies  and  gentlemen,  there  are  those 
who  think  they  can  down  the  Anglo-Saxon  race, 
but" — slight  pause — "they  don't  know  what  they 

are  un-der-ta-kin " 

Through  the  long  tram-ride  home  I  read  "The  Un 
defeated,"  hanging  to  a  strap,  startled  by  the  ex 
plosion  of  fireworks,  disquieted  by  the  size  and 
threat  of  the  mobs  that  thronged  the  streets;  but 
"The  Undefeated"  kept  me  cool  and  content.  Such 
is  the  power  of  literature.  That  night,  the  hottest 
night  of  the  year,  unwilling  to  sleep,  I  finished  "The 
Undefeated." 

Then,  the  time  being  2  a.  m.,  I  reflected  on  the 
potency  of  the  modern  novel.  When  it  is  a  mere 
story — it  is  a  mere  story;  but  a  novel  like  "The  Un 
defeated"  carries  much  more  than  the  brisk  and 
entertaining  tale.  It  takes  the  place  of  the  exhorta 
tion,  the  sermon,  not  explicitly  but  implicitly.  This 
story,  true  to  life,  and  quite  credible,  tells  the  effect 


266  Authors  and  I 

of  the  stress  of  war  upon  a  group  of  quite  ordinary 
people.  Some  come  through  it  purified  and 
strengthened,  others  remain  as  they  are.  It  is  just 
life,  and  the  difference  between  a  novel  of  this  kind 
and  the  sermon  is  this:  The  sermon  teaches  through 
dialectic,  the  novel  teaches  through  characterisation. 
Good  characterisation  always  convinces.  The 
characters  in  "The  Undefeated"  act  and  evolve  be 
cause  they  belong  to  life;  they  are  selected  from 
life  and  organised  into  a  pattern  which  becomes  a 
work  of  art. 

In  fiction  the  episode  is  easy  to  state,  the  coherent 
whole  is  hard  to  relate.  There  are  some  novelists 
who,  starting  from  the  episode  of  Liz  and  Polly, 
could  build  it  into  a  coherent  whole,  a  work  of 
art.  Do  you  know  the  episode? 
It  happened  in  London  during  an  air  raid.  Polly 
was  conductor  of  a  motor-bus  which  had  just 
emerged  from  the  zone  upon  which  the  bombs  were 
falling.  As  the  bus  rushed  out  of  the  area  another 
bus  approached  going  toward  the  danger  zone,  and 
in  the  conductor  Polly  recognised  a  friend.  The 
busses  flashed  past  each  other;  she  shouted:  "Stick 
it,  Liz,"  and  Liz  shouted  back,  "You  bet!" 
Problem:  To  create  the  lives  of  Liz  and  Polly 
from  their  action  and  those  few  quick  words.  I 
think  the  "Stick  it,  Liz"  episode  should  come  at  the 
end  of  the  volume. 

Polly  and  Liz  and  the  Mayor  of  Blackhampton  are 
among  the  Undefeated.  It  is  they,  the  Undefeated, 
who  move  and  make  the  world. 


49.    ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON 

T   HAD  clean  forgotten  that  R.  L.  S.  ever  lived  at 
Saranac    Lake    in    the    Adirondacks.      It    was 
brought  to  my  knowledge  in  a  direct  and  pictorial 
way. 

Here  I  am  at  Lake  Placid,  and  here  lives  T.  M. 
Longsteeth  who  hns  published  a  book  on  the  Adiron 
dacks,  and  who  knows  the  district  as  R.  L.  S.  knew 
Edinburgh.  One  day  he  invited  me  to  climb  Mt. 
Cobble.  It  is  not  a  mountain  at  all;  it  is  a  pro 
digious  hill,  and  half  an  hour's  rough  scramble  takes 
you  to  the  summit.  But  what  a  view — the  range  of 
mountains,  the  wilderness  of  forest,  the  innumer 
able  lakes!  He  pointed  out  to  me  Whiteface  Moun 
tain,  the  Indian  Pass,  John  Brown's  farm,  and  then 
he  said,  "There's  Saranac  Lake." 
I  looked  an  interrogation. 

"Where  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  lived  during  the 
winter  of  1887-88,  and  where  he  wrote  the  Scribner 
essays,  and  part  of  "The  Master  of  Ballantrac." 
The  house  he  occupied  is  now  the  Stevenson 
Memorial.  You  should  see  it." 
Dimly  I  began  to  remember;  and  how  from  Saranac 
Lake  R.  L.  S.  and  his  household  travelled  to  San 
Francisco,  and  thence  to  the  South  Seas  on  the 
schooner  yacht  Casco;  and  the  end  of  those  adven 
tures  was  his  Samoan  home,  world-wide  fame,  exile, 
267 


268  Authors  and  I 

and  the  bestowal  upon  him  by  the  natives  of  Samoa 
of  the  title  of  Tusitala— Teller  of  Tales. 
It  was  exciting  and  stimulating  to  be  on  the  Steven 
son  trail  once  again,  for  he  was  master  among  the 
young  writers  of  my  youth,  and,  yes,  to  open  a 
book  by  him  today  is  to  recapture  the  old  thrill.  He 
is  the  writer's  writer;  his  words  don't  walk,  they 
dance  into  their  right  places;  he  surprises,  soothes, 
and  elates.  He  is  the  real  man  of  letters.  Every- 
thing  he  handled  he  adorned,  and  he  touched  every 
room  in  the  house  of  letters.  But  do  the  young  men 
and  young  women  of  today  know  him  and  read 
him?  I  wonder. 

They  know  all  about  him  at  Saranac  Lake.  That 
was  a  pleasant  surprise.  Four  Saranac  folk,  a  man, 
a  woman,  and  two  boys,  of  whom  in  turn  I  asked 
the  way,  knew  of  Stevenson  and  knew  the  Steven 
son  house.  It  stands  just  without  the  growing 
town,  that  has  spread  over-much  since  Stevenson 
lived  there,  on  a  little  hill  beyond  the  traffic.  Half 
way  up  the  hill,  I  made  another  inquiry  of  a  gar 
dener.  "Oh,  yes,  it's  just  up  there— you  go  along 
Stevenson  Lane  to  that  white  frame  house  with  the 
veranda.  You  can  almost  read  the  sign  from  here 
—there  it  is,  'The  Stevenson  Memorial/  "  Truly, 
it  was  strange  and  gratifying  to  find  this  wandering 
Scot,  our  R.  L.  S.,  so  far  from  home,  a  mere  bird 
of  passage  in  this  neighbourhood,  known  so  well  to 
day  at  Saranac  Lake. 

This  is  owing  to  the  Stevenson  Society  at  Saranac 
Lake,  that  evolved  from  the  Stevenson  Memorial 
Committee.  This  society,  with  a  membership  of 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson  269 

200,  was  able  in  October,  1916,  to  dedicate  as  a  pub 
lic  memorial  the  rooms  Stevenson  occupied  in  the 
Baker  Cottage  in   1887-88,  and  to  fill  them  with 
memorials  of  R.  L.  S.     It  is  a  simple  and  affecting 
shrine,  done  well,  done  with  fervour  and  affection. 
You  climb  the  grass  garden  and  reach  the  veranda 
where,  as  he  has  told  us,  R.  L.  S.  walked  for  inspira 
tion  ;  you  pause  before  a  bronze  tablet,  nearly  three 
feet  high,  imbedded  in  the  wall,  and  there  is  R.  L. 
S.  himself  in  bronze  by  Gutzon   Borglum,  clad — 
well,  R.  L.  S.  was  always  an  idealist  in  dress — and 
here  he  wears  a  big  fur  coat  and  a  tight-fitting 
cap.    He  is  very  erect ;  he  is  walking  on  these  very 
boards.     There  can  be  doubt  about  that,  for  en 
graved  on  the  side  of  the  figure  is  this  inscription: 
"I  was  walking  in  the  veranda  of  a  small  cottage 
outside  the  hamlet  of  Saranac.     It  was  winter,  the 
night  was  very  dark,  the  air  clear  and  cold,  and 
sweet  with  the  purity  of  forests.  For  the  making 
of  a  story  here  were  fine  conditions.     'Come,'  said 
I  to  my  engine,  'let  us  make  a  tale.'  " 
Then  he  went  inside  and  the  tale  he  began  to  make 
was  "The  Master  of  Ballantrae." 
Soon  I  went  inside  and  stood  silently  in  the  smaller 
room,  and  looked  from  it  to  the  larger  room,  each 
crowded  with  Stcvensoniana.     In  a  comer  was  the 
desk,  plain  wood  with  a  glazed  bookcase  above,  con 
taining  first  editions,  etc.     At  this  desk  he  wrote 
"A   Christmas   Sermon,"   "The   Lantern-Bearers," 
"Pulvis  et  Umbra,"  part  of  "The  Master  of  Ballan 
trae,"  and  "The  Wrong  Box,"  in  conjunction  with 
Lloyd  Osbourne.    In  cases  and  upon  the  walls  arc 


270  Authors  and  I 

objects,  photographs,  drawings,  that  cry  in  every 
fold  and  line  the  name  of  Stevenson — his  velvet 
coat,  his  red  sash,  Siron's  Inn  at  Barbizon,  Skerry- 
vore  at  Bournemouth,  wood  blocks  by  him,  his  skull 
cap,  the  last  pen  he  used,  much  bitten  at  the  butt- 
end — over  half  a  hundred  records  of  this  beloved 
writer,  who  paused  here,  and  pressed  the  Adiron- 
dacks.  With  care,  with  love,  his  imprint  has  been 
preserved. 

His  presence  became  insistent.  I  walked  the 
veranda,  a  trifle  ashamed  to  think  how  in  the  rush 
of  life  and  letters,  the  many  claims  and  the  many 
distractions,  the  presence  of  R.  L.  S.  had  faded 
almost  to  a  wraith.  How  vigorous  and  persuasive 
his  influence  was  in  the  late  eighties  and  nineties, 
among  young  men  of  letters !  We  all  tried  to  write 
like  R.  L.  S. — so  foolish  an  emprise.  We  tried  to 
be  fantastic,  and  romantic,  and  to  use  tickling  and 
caressing  words — so  absurd,  because  we  were  not 
Stevensons.  We  decided  that  beside  "Travels 
with  a  Donkey"  and  "An  Inland  Voyage,"  all  travel 
books  were  banal,  and  we  asserted  that  after  "Dr. 
Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,"  all  textbooks  on  psychology 
were  immature  and  tedious.  O  youth,  so  generous 
and  unreflecting!  But  we  did  not  see  R.  L.  S. — the 
gay,  the  buoyant,  the  prankish.  Before  1887  he 
had  left  London,  never  to  return.  He  was  already 
becoming  a  tradition,  a  legend,  his  wild  talk  at  the 
Savile  Club,  his  visits  to  Sidney  Colvin,  his  sudden 
appearances  in  Soho  and  elsewhere.  He  but  passed 
through  London  as  he  passed  through  Saranac;  he 
was  always  a  wanderer. 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson  271 

Vicariously  we  knew  him.    When  Henley  published 
his  "Book  of  Verses,"  there  he  was  cut  with  cunning 
words  into  a  cameo— "Thin-legged,  slight  unspeak 
ably,  a  hint  of  Ariel,  a  touch  of  Puck,  with  some 
thing  of  the  Shorter  Catechist." 
How  great  was  our  delight  when  Andrew  Lang 
and  Stevenson  began  hurling  poems  at  one  another 
— "Dear  Andrew  with  the  brindled  hair,"  to  which 
Lang  replied  with  a  poem  beginning,  "Dear  Louis 
of  the  awful  cheek."     Charles  Baxter,  too,  became 
known  to  us.     To  him  Henley  dedicated  his  "Old 
Friends"  poem — "We  have  been  good  friends,  you 
and  Lewis  (Henley  always  spelt  him  Lewis)  and  I. 
How  good  it  sounds — you  and  Lewis  and  I."  And 
Henley  hoped  that  in  these  three — "you  and  Lewis 
and  I,"  was  something  of  the  gallant  dream  that 
old  Dumas,  the  great,  the  humane,  the  seven  and 
seventy  times  to  be  forgiven,  dreamed  as  a  blessing 
to  the  race — the  immortal  Musketeers.    Lewis,  as 
Henley  sang,  became  the  world's.    Years  later  Hen 
ley  had  an  unkind  moment  about  Lewis — but  that  is 
another  story. 

I  never  pass  the  British  Museum  and  look  up  at 
the  stone  house  where  the  keeper  of  the  Prints  lives 
without  thinking  of  R.  L.  S.  For  that  was  the  official 
residence  of  Sidney  Colvin,  his  austere  and  lifelong 
friend.  To  him  Vailima  letters  were  addressed;  he 
was  closer  than  anybody  to  R.  L.  S.  and  in  all  the 
letters  he  never  once  addressed  Mr.  Colvin  by  his 
Christian  name. 

No  writer  ever  had  such  a  faithful  friend  and 
admirer,  or  so  competent  a  biographer.  How  neatly, 


272  Authors  and  I 

in  this  passage,  S.  C.  places  R.  L.  S.:  "To  attain 
the  mastery  of  an  elastic  and  harmonious  English 
prose,  in  which  trite  and  inanimate  elements  should 
have  no  place,  and  which  should  be  supple  to  all 
uses  and  alive  in  all  its  joints  and  members,  was 
an  aim  which  he  pursued  with  ungrudging,  even 
with  heroic,  toil." 

And  R.  L.  S.  himself!     Here  is  the  real  man— the 
innermost  of  him.     In  a  letter  to  Henley  he  is  try 
ing  to  keep  up  his  spirits  with  brave  phrases: 
"Sursum  Corda: 
"Heave  ahead. 
"Here's  luck. 
"Art  and  Blue  Heaven. 
"April  and  God's  Larks. 
"Green  reeds  and  the  sky-scattering  river. 
"A  stately  music. 
"Enter  God ! 

"Ay,  but  you  know,  until  a  man  can  write  that 
'Enter  God'  he  has  made  no  art !  None !" 
The  light  begins  to  fade.  I  must  leave  the  veranda, 
sweet  with  the  purity  of  forests,  where  R.  L.  S. 
walked  and  said  to  his  engine,  "Come  let  us  make 
a  tale."  When  I  told  this  to  a  practical  American 
boy  he  answered,  "But  why  does  he  say  engine? 
That's  silly." 

Yes,  Stevenson  was  a  writer's  writer.  We  read 
him  for  the  vivid  phrase,  the  radiant  thought;  for 
the  unexpected  word  which  so  often  happens  to  be 
the  right  one. 


50.     FRANCIS  THOMPSON 

AND   while   I   loitered    I   saw   a   small,   green 
volume,  and  on  the  back  of  it  were  the  words, 
"Modern     Library,     Complete     Poems:     Francis 
Thompson." 

It  was  a  happy  encounter,  because  I  was  going  on 
a  Hudson  River  steamer  to  Poughkeepsie.  Why 
to  Poughkeepsie?  Because  that  thriving  educa 
tional  riverside  town  is  mentioned,  with  respect,  in 
that  minor  classic,  "Washington  Square,"  by  Henry 
James.  I  had  meant  to  reread  "Washington 
Square"  on  the  voyage.  Francis  Thompson  took  the 
place  of  "Washington  Square." 
All  my  Francis  Thompson  books  are  3000  miles 
away,  and  as  he  was  pre-war,  and  pre-vers  libre,  he 
should  have  seemed  remote  and  old-fashioned.  It 
was  not  so.  A  river  trip  is  the  place  for  poetry, 
and  as  we  swept  up  the  lordly  Hudson,  Francis 
seemed  to  be  speaking  to  me  in  his  involved  splendid 
language,  so  rich,  so  obscure,  so  simple  when  his 
emotion  raced  over  his  obsolescent  Latinities,  and 
drove  him  into  the  simplicity  of  "Love  and  the 
Child,"  "Dream  Tryst,"  and  that  haunting  poem 
which  he  calls  "The  Kingdom  of  God,"  with  the 
motto,  "In  No  Strange  Land."  This  poem  refers 
to  the  Thames;  here  was  I  on  the  Hudson.  Can 
you  wonder  that  I  turned  first  to— 
273 


274  Authors  and  I 

O  world  invisible,  \ve  view  thee, 
O  world  intangible,  we  touch  thee, 
O  world  unknowable,  we  know  thee, 
Inapprehensible,  we  clutch  thee! 

Does  the  fish  soar  to  find  the  ocean, 
The  eagle  plunge  to  find  the  air — 
That  we  ask  of  the  stars  in  motion 
If  they  have  rumour  of  thee  there? 

Not  where  the  wheeling  systems  darken, 
And  our  benumbed  conceiving  soars! — 
The  drift  of  pinions,  would  we  hearken, 
Beats  at  our  own  clay-shuttered  doors. 

The  angels  keep  their  ancient  places; — 
Turn  but  a  stone,  and  start  a  wing! 
'Tis  ye,  'tis  your  estranged  faces, 
That  miss  the  many-splendoured  thing. 

But  (when  so  sad  thou  canst  not  sadder) 
Cry; — and  upon  thy  so  sore  loss 
Shall  shine  the  traffic  of  Jacob's  ladder, 
Pitched  between  Heaven  and  Charing  Cross. 

Yea,  in  the  night,  my  Soul,  my  daughter, 
Cry, — clinging  Heaven  by  the  hems; 
And  lo,  Christ  walking  on  the  water 
Not  of  Gennesareth,  but  Thames! 

Occasionally,  very  occasionally,  he  played  with  his 
Muse,  but  for  the  most  part  he  was  her  devoted, 
prone  yet  proud  servant.  Coventry  Patmore  was 
his  master.  Intellectually  and  emotionally  he  was 
a  deeply  religious  man  and  absolutely  sincere  accord 
ing  to  his  light  and  training.  He  kept  a  common 
place  book;  he  bought  these  books  at  a  cheap  sta 
tioner's  for  a  penny  apiece;  in  them  the  whole  of 


Francis   Thompson  275 

his  poetry  was  written,  in  upright,  even  calligraphy, 
a  boyish  handwriting,  with  hardly  an  alteration.  He 
wrote  much  in  bed  through  long  mornings  that 
sometimes  extended  through  the  afternoon.  And  he 
would  write  through  the  evenings,  often  with  lead 
pencil,  pacing  up  and  down  his  dingy,  disorderly 
bed-sitting  room.  His  penny  notebooks  were  tossed 
into  a  drawer  where  he  kept  his  scant,  his  very  scant 
wardrobe,  and  in  one  of  these  commonplace  books 
he  wrote  this  sentence  which  explains  Francis 
Thompson :  "To  be  the  poet  of  the  return  to  nature 
is  much,  but  I  would  rather  be  the  poet  of  the 
return  to  God."  That  was  the  life  and  purpose 
of  this  unworldly  man,  who  lived  in  a  world  of 
his  own  with  which  he  was  well  content.  Comfort, 
cleanliness,  order,  provision  for  the  future  did  not 
interest  him.  His  life  was  lived  in  his  dreams.  There 
was  little  shock  when  he  came  out  of  them  into  the 
world  because  he  ignored  the  world. 
People  who  had  read  his  poems  were  disturbed 
when  Francis  Thompson  was  pointed  out  to  them. 
"Thqf  Francis  Thompson!"  they  would  say,  gazing 
mournfully  at  the  shabby,  strange,  emaciated  figure, 
darting  rather  than  walking  through  London  streets, 
in  mud-spattered,  ancient  clothes,  with  the  fish 
basket  in  which  he  kept  his  review  books  slung  over 
his  shoulder,  unconscious  of  rain  or  mire,  oblivious 
to  the  jibes  of  street  Arabs — for  his  thoughts  were 
elsewhere;  he  was  seeing  the  world  invisible,  touch 
ing  the  world  intangible,  his  eyes  were  shining  on 
the  traffic  of  Jacob's  Ladder  pitched  between 
Heaven  and  Charing  Cross. 


276  Authors  and  I 

It  was  unnecessary  to  pity  him.  He  had  the  life  he 
wanted.  He  was  content  to  be  relieved  of  the  prob 
lem  of  paying  his  wray.  For  a  long  time,  when  I 
was  editing  the  Academy,.  I  sent  weekly  to  his  land 
lady  a  modest  check  for  his  lodging  and  intermittent 
board,  and  doled  him  out  a  crown  or  a  half  crown 
when  he  troubled  to  call  for  the  money.  It  was 
unwise  to  give  him  more.  When  he  brought  in  to 
the  Academy  office  the  "Ode  on  Cecil  Rhodes"  many 
hours  late  ("I  thought  today  was  Wednesday"  was 
his  expected  and  accepted  excuse),  written  on  scraps 
of  paper,  he  was  handed  three  shillings,  which  won 
the  retort,  "Thank  you.  I  shall  certainly  give  my 
self  a  good  dinner."  These  doles  were  not  charity. 
Far  from  it.  They  were  payment  for  magnificent 
literary  wTork.  He  would  write  interminable  letters, 
interspersed  with  chaotic  figures,  trying  to  prove 
that  there  should  be  a  balance  of  eighteen  pence  in 
his  favour.  Although  indifferent  to  promises  and  the 
fulfillment  of  engagements,  he  never  swerved  from 
rectitude  in  his  intellectual  performances.  Whether 
he  was  writing  on  Caesar  or  on  Shelley,  he  always 
gave  of  his  best,  but  his  habit  of  bringing  in  his 
article  the  day  after  the  paper  was  published  dis 
turbed  his  editors.  They  never  got  used  to  it. 
This  literary  journalism  he  practised  in  his  latter 
years  when  his  muse  had  ceased  to  come  at  call. 
From  first  to  last  his  "Father,  Brother,  Friend" 
was  Wilfrid  Meynell  (see  the  poem  to  W.  M.). 
He  raised  him  from  the  gutter  whither  Francis 
had  gone  from  choice — to  be  free.  For  nineteen 
years  he  kept  him,  not  easily,  from  a  return  to  the 


Francis   Thompson  277 

gutter — and  freedom.  No  poet  ever  had  such  a 
friend ;  no  poet  ever  had  such  a  home  as  the  home  of 
the  Meynell  family.  Certes,  he  was  a  difficult  guest. 
He  would  arrive  for  dinner  thinking  it  was  lunch 
eon,  and  come  prepared  to  dine  at  bedtime.  He  rare 
ly  sat  down;  he  would  pace  the  room  for  two  or 
three  hours,  following  his  own  train  of  thought,  and 
interjecting  into  the  general  conversation  a  passage 
explanatory  of  the  point  his  thought  had  reached. 
Often  it  was  about  an  overcoat  that  someone  had 
stolen  from  him  years  before.  He  rarely  talked 
poetry,  but  he  would  talk  cricket  with  vigour  and 
animation.  Suddenly  he  would  disappear  without  a 
good-night. 

He  adored  the  children  of  the  household.  Many 
of  the  poems  in  this  volume  are  inspired  by  and  ad 
dressed  to  them.  The  second  son,  Everard  Mey 
nell,  has  written  his  life,  a  remarkable  biography, 
a  rare  combination  of  insight  and  narrative.  The 
father,  Wilfrid  Meynell,  made  the  poet's  acquaint 
ance  through  Francis  Thompson's  "Essay  on 
Shelley,"  one  of  the  finest  pieces  of  prose  in  the 
language.  It  was  sent  to  him  as  editor  of  Merry 
England  after  it  had  been  refused  by  the  Dublin 
Reinew;  the  author  gave  an  address  at  Charing 
Cross  post  office,  but  it  was  long  before  he  could 
be  found,  as  he  was  holding  horses'  heads  in  the 
Strand.  Twenty  years  later  this  "Essay  on  Shelley" 
was  published — with  acclamation — in  the  Dublin 
Rfi'ini*.  Francis  Thompson  had  arrived,  and  Wil 
frid  Meynell  set  himself  to  arrange  a  definite  edition 
of  the  poems. 


278  Authors  and  I 

So  on  the  way  to  Poughkeepsie  I  went  sadly  and 
gladly  through  the  poems.  I  could  remember  the 
advent  and  environment  of  many  of  them.  Perhaps 
the  Middle  West  is  not  yet  quite  ready  for  Francis 
Thompson.  Such  words  as  corrival,  chiton,  levin, 
enhavocked,  assuaries,  are  not  easily  digested; 
neither  are  such  stanzas  as: 

The  abhorred  spring  of  Dis, 
With  seething  presciences 

Affirm 
The  preparate  worm, 

nor 

Wise-Unto-Hell  Ecclesiast 

Who  siev'dst  life  to  the  gritted  last! 

But  everyone  can  understand 

On  Ararat  there  grew  a  vine; 
When  Asia  from  her  bathing  rose, 

and 

Look  for  me  in  the  nurseries  of  Heaven 

and 

Where  is  the  land  of  Luthany, 
Where  is  the  tract  of  Elenore? 
I  am  bound  therefor. 

On  the  way  to  Poughkeepsie  I  chose  a  secluded 
spot  to  leeward  and  read  aloud,  three  times  over, 
to  the  bright  air  and  the  brighter  waters  that  won 
derful  poem,  "The  Hound  of  Heaven."  That  is 
the  way  to  begin  your  study  of  Francis  Thompson. 
Read  this  amazing  poem  aloud,  again  and  again,  ab- 


Francis   Thompson  279 

sorb  the  splendour  of  it,  and  gradually  the  meaning 
will  come  to  you.  Then  you  will  find  that  Master 
Eckhart  said  it  all  in  seventeen  words,  "He  who 
will  escape  Him  only  runs  to  his  bosom,  for  all 
corners  are  open  to  him." 

So  we  came  to  Poughkeepsie  on  Hudson,  but  I 
was  thinking  of  Charing  Cross  on  Thames,  and  of 
those  who  find  the  many-splendoured  thing.  Fran 
cis  Thompson  did  not  have  to  find  it,  because  he 
always  had  it,  in  spite  of  "the  bur  o'  the  world." 


51.    TOLSTOY 

WAS  reading  in  a  club  when  I  heard  a  man 
-*-  say,  "I'm  going  to  write  a  play  round  Tolstoy." 
The  name  of  Tolstoy  aroused  so  many  memories 
that  I  dropped  the  book  and  mused  on  a  scroll  of 
history.  On  one  side  of  the  scroll  was  the  pa 
triarchal,  bearded  figure  of  Tolstoy — for  we  who 
were  brought  up  on  Carlyle,  Emerson,  and  Tolstoy 
always  regarded  him  as  venerable  and  bearded;  on 
the  other  side  of  the  scroll  is — present  Russia.  How 
does  this  great  man  stand  today  in  Russia?  How 
do  the  Bolsheviki  regard  Tolstoy?  You  may  read  in 
the  "Reminiscences"  of  his  son  how  Tolstoy  was 
visited  from  time  to  time  by  certain  "dark  people," 
unkempt  and  unwashed,  with  whom  he  always 
argued  warmly;  you  may  read  of  certain  nihilists 
who  often  appeared  at  Yasnaya  Polyana,  "and  under 
my  father's  influence  gave  up  terrorism  altogether"; 
you  may  read  that,  during  the  siege  of  Sebastopol, 
Tolstoy  proposed  to  the  allies  to  avoid  bloodshed  by 
deciding  the  dispute  with  a  game  of  chess.  And 
you  may  have  heard  of  the  noble  letter  that  Tolstoy 
wrote  to  the  Tzar  of  Russia  on  the  massacre  of  the 
Jews  at  Kishinev,  which  was  a  plea  for  paternal 
authority  against  state  authority — paternal  author 
ity  to  which,  in  Tolstoy's  words,  men  submit 
voluntarily,  as  the  members  of  a  family  submit  to 
280 


Tolstoy  281 

the  senior  members.  The  original  draft  of  this 
letter  from  Tolstoy  to  the  Tzar  came,  in  the  whirli 
gig  of  time,  to  New  York  and  was  sold  by  auction. 
I  saw  it,  and  handled  it. 

Examining  the  thin,  unemotional  calligraphy  of  this 
letter,  I  recalled  the  accounts  of  the  proof  reading  of 
"Anna  Karenina,"  which  Tolstoy  described  as  "my 
tedious,  vulgar  'Anna  Karenina'  " ;  how  he  would 
interwrite  into  the  long  galley  proofs  to  such  an 
extent  that  poor  Countess  Tolstoy  had  to  sit  up 
all  night  to  copy  the  whole  thing  out  afresh;  how, 
in  the  morning,  the  new  manuscript  would  be 
neatly  piled  up  on  the  table  in  her  fine,  clear  hand 
writing;  how  "my  father  would  carry  the  sheets 
off  to  his  study  to  have  just  one  last  look,"  and  by 
evening  it  would  be  just  as  bad  again;  "the  whole 
thing  had  been  rewritten  and  messed  up  once  more." 
It  was  Jane  Walsh  Carlyle,  was  it  not,  who  said 
to  a  girl  friend:  "My  dear,  never  marry  a  man 
of  genius?"  And  it  was  the  son,  Count  Ilya  Tolstoy, 
who  said:  "Papa  was  the  cleverest  man  in  the 
world.  He  always  knew  everything.  There  was 
no  being  naughty  with  him." 

Then   I   took   from   the  shelves  Aylmer   Maude's 
"Life  of  Tolstoy"  and,  turning  to  the  Chronology, 
read  some  of  the  entries: 
1878  Writing  "Confession." 
1881  Letter  to  Tzar. 
1883  Writing  "What  Do  I  Believe?" 
1885  Becomes  a  Vegetarian. 
1885  Renounces  Hunting  and  Tobacco. 
1889  Finishes  "The  Kreutzer  Sonata." 


282  Authors  and  I 

1891  Renounces  Copyrights  and  Divides  Property 

Among  His  Family. 

1893  Finishes  "The  Kingdom  of  God  Is  Within 

You." 

1898  Finishes  "What  Is  Art?" 

1901  Excommuncation. 

1902  Finishes  "What  Is  Religion?" 

1903  Letter  to  Tzar. 

1906  Seizure  by  Police  of  Many  of  Tolstoy's 
Works. 

1908  Jubilee  in  Honour  of  Tolstoy's  Eightieth 
Birthday. 

Soon  afterward  followed  his  departure  into  the 
wilderness  which  has  puzzled  so  many,  but  which 
Tolstoy,  being  Tolstoy  and  nobody  else,  was  pre 
cisely  what  might  have  been  presaged  of  him.  Then 
I  read  the  chapter  about  his  difference,  or  quarrel, 
with  Turgenef.  Strange!  And  so  there  came  into 
the  ken  of  memory  the  little  group  of  Russian  intel 
lectuals,  with  Tolstoy  at  their  head,  who,  we  used 
to  think,  represented  Russia.  To  us,  they  stood  for 
Russia.  Now  we  know,  alas,  that  these  intellectuals 
represented  no  more  than  1  per  cent.  Perhaps  not 

even  that. 

•  *  •  • 

I  wonder  what  the  man  will  make  of  a  play  with 
Tolstoy  as  a  subject.  Is  he  not  too  great,  too 
elusive,  too  spiritual? 


52.     HUGH  WALPOLE 

VJTTHEN  I  heard  that  Hugh  Walpole  was  about 
to  make  his  last  public  appearance  in  New 

York  as  a  Lecturer  before  returning  Home,  I  said, 

to  myself,  "You  must  be  there!" 

Why? 

I  am  not  an  ardent  admirer  of  Mr.  Walpole's  books. 

Perhaps  they  are  not  quite  adult  enough  for  me. 
Even  "The  Dark  Forest,"  much  liked,  all  about 
Russia  and  the  war,  failed  to  hold  my  attention. 
Halfway  through  I  got  lost,  as  most  people  do,  who 
adventure  actually,  or  imaginatively,  into  Russia; 
and  I  know  not  how  "The  Dark  Forest"  ends. 
Moreover,  I  do  not  like  diaries  or  letters  in  novels. 
Their  intrusion  assumes  that  the  author  is  not  facing 
the  music  squarely;  he  is  putting  up  another  fellow 
to  speak  for  him. 

Why,  then,  was  I  so  eager  to  attend  his  last  lec 
ture? 

You  will  remember  how  tired  the  Athenians  became 
of  hearing  Aristidcs  called — The  Just.  I  think  the 
reason  that  I  wanted  to  see  Mr.  Walpole  upon  the 
lecture  platform  was,  not  because  I  was  tired  of 
hearing  him  called  Charming,  but  because  I  wanted 
to  discover  how  it  is  done,  how  one  gets  the  reputa 
tion  for  being — Charming.  He  had  been  lecturing 
up  and  down  America  for  months;  advertisemcnti 
283 


284  Authors  and  I 

of  his  eleven  books,  in  heavy  type,  with  half  a  dozen 
lines  of  praise  about  each  (don't  be  silly;  I  am  not 
jealous)  were  displayed  in  the  daily  newspapers ;  the 
chroniclers  always  wrote  delightful  things  about  his 
lectures,  and  at  every  dinner  party  I  attend  some 
nice  young  thing  inevitably  asks,  "Oh,  do  tell  me 
about  Mr.  Hugh  Walpole."  Then  I  begin:  "His 
father  is  a  bishop,  he  loves  Cornwall,  he  is  a 

bachelor,  he  writes "    Even  the  young  lions  of 

the  Chicago  Daily  Neu's  fell  to  his  charm.     They 
like  his  "English   accent";  they  have   determined 
that  he  is  "an  English  writer  who  is  at  the  same 
time  a  gentleman,"  and  they  admit  that  he  shows 
"no  air  of  condescension."    In  brief,  he  is  a  success 
in  America,  a  great  success,  as  man,  lecturer,  and 
writer;    and    as    it    is   one   of    my    gay    duties   to 
chronicle   the  success,   or  non-success,   of   English, 
Scottish,  Irish,  Canadian  and  Welsh  lecturers,  and 
writers  in  America  I  said  to  myself,  firmly,  when  I 
saw  his  lecture  announced,  "You  must  be  there." 
It  so  happened  that  on  the  day  of  the  lecture  a  West 
erner,  who  is  also  a  writer,  was  lunching  with  me. 
This  Westerner  is  a  one  hundred  per  cent  Ameri 
can  (I  have  never  heard  of  a  one  hundred  per  cent 
Englishman).    His  attitude  toward  the  New  Eng 
land  authors,  and  to  their  English   forbears,  past 
and  present,   is  one  of  genial  patronage;  but   his 
crust  of  patronage  is  not  able  to  conceal  his  in 
tense  curiosity  about  the  younger  English  writers. 
His  questions  were  as  many  and  as  bewildering  as 
the  questions  on  "The  Readers  Guide"  page  of  the 
New  York  Evening  Post.     Suddenly  I  asked  him 


Hugh  Walpole  285 

if  he  would  like  to  accompany  me  to  Hugh  Wai- 
pole's  lecture  on  "Creating  a  Novel."  He  accepted 
with  ardour. 

Hugh  Walpole  was  introduced  by  Owen  Johnson. 
That  was  clever.  They  are  a  neat  contrast.  Mr. 
Walpole  is  a  blond,  with  a  fair  complexion  and 
a  dimple.  Mr.  Johnson  is  a  brunette,  with  a 
dark  complexion,  and  the  look  of  a  man  who  has 
written  "The  Woman  Gives."  Mr.  Johnson  is 
also  the  son  of  an  Ambassador,  which  is  piquant  in 
these  days  when  the  younger  novelists  rather  over 
whelm  their  parents.  In  his  introductory  remarks 
Mr.  Johnson  ingeniously  let  the  audience  (it  was 
large,  and  mainly  ladies)  understand  that  the  author 
of  "Fortitude,"  "The  Secret  City,"  and  "The  Green 
Mirror"  is  rather  nicer  than  other  novelist-lec 
turers  of  the  English  invasion. 
The  Westerner  and  I  sat  in  the  second  row  of  the 
stalls.  He  leaned  forward  on  the  back  of  the  chair 
in  front;  not  once  did  he  take  his  eyes  off  the 
lecturer.  I  could  see  that  he  was  impressed  by 
something,  but  whether  it  was  the  manner  or  the 
matter  of  the  author  of  "The  Prelude  to  Aventure," 
I  could  not  determine. 

Of  one  thing  I  am  sure:  Mr.  Walpole  is  a  charm 
ing  lecturer.  He  knows  just  what  to  do,  when  to 
be  softly  serious,  when  to  tell  an  amusing  story, 
and  when  to  smile  mildly  at  himself  and  his  en 
thusiasms.  He  was  severe  on  the  family  genius, 
and  told  the  delighted  audience  how  he  himself 
had  been  checked  and  subdued  in  his  young  days. 
"And  here  I  am  now,"  he  might  have  added,  "lee- 


286  Authors  and  I 

turing  to  a  large  and  fashionable  New  York 
audience,  with  eleven  books  to  my  credit,  and  the 
wide,  delightful  world  still  before  me."  I  turned 
to  look  at  Mr.  Owen  Johnson,  who  had  seated  him 
self  behind  us  in  the  third  row.  I  tried  to  see  if  he 
was  smiling,  but  the  light  was  too  dim. 
Air.  Walpole's  manner  is  as  charming  as  his  mat 
ter.  He  has  the  buoyancy,  enthusiasm,  and  candour 
of  Mr.  Alfred  Noyes.  He  and  Mr.  Noyes  talk 
directly  to  the  audience;  they  admit  them  to  their 
confidence.  They  might  be  twin  brothers.  Mr. 
Walpole  does  not  use  notes.  Ease  and  frankness 
are  his  adjectives,  and  confidence.  He  is  not  in  the 
least  aggressive;  he  just  speaks  on  as  if  lecturing 
were  a  pleasant  duty  like  tipping  the  club  servants 
handsomely  at  Christmas,  or  playing  for  the  game's 
sake,  not  for  personal  prowess,  in  a  football  match. 
His  division  of  the  modern  novel  into  four  classes, 
with  appropriate  comments,  was  neat  and  enter 
taining —  (1)  the  novel  of  Style  (Stevenson,  etc.); 
(2)  the  novel  of  Ideas  (selling  a  birthright  for  "a 
pot  of  message") ;  (3)  the  novel  of  Adventure  and 
Incident  (Dumas  was  idolised)  ;  (4)  the  novel  of 
Character  and  Psychology  (he  pretended  to  tell  us 
how  he  does  it).  The  ladies  laughed  and  ap 
plauded,  but  Mr.  Owen  Johnson,  the  Westerner, 
and  I  know  too  much.  We  were  glum.  The  per 
oration  was  about  Russia.  He  was  there  during  the 
first  year  of  the  war  with  the  Russian  Red  Cross, 
and  returned  later  as  a  King's  Messenger.  With 
Russia  came  the  serious  note — the  great  simplicity  of 
the  Moujik,  the  pity  of  it  all.  Then  a  pause,  a 


Hugh  Walpole  287 

repetition  of  Tolstoy's  pet  idea  that  the  world  will 
never  become  better  until  the  individual  improves; 
and  then, — click,  the  end.  Loud  applause.  A  re 
call.  It  was  all  beautifully  done — a  finished  per 
formance. 

The  Westerner  was  silent  as  we  walked  away. 
Presently  he  said:  "I  didn't  get  much  from  the 
lecture  itself.  What  fascinates  me  is  his  ease,  his 
assurance,  the  idea  that  he  is  acceptable,  that  he 
can't  go  wrong.  I  suppose  it's  the  tradition  that 
envelops  him.  He  walks  in  a  protecting  back 
ground.  I  seem  to  be  striding  along  all  alone 
in  a  raw  light." 

"Don't  worry,"  I  said.  "Each  has  his  own,  and 
each  must  grow  up  in  it  and  use  it.  You  have 
the  prairie  and  the  pioneers  behind  you.  He  is 
descended  from  Horace  Walpole  and  Sir  Robert 
Walpole;  his  father  is  the  Bishop  of  Edinburgh;  he 
was  educated  at  Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge, 
and  his  recreation  is  music.  The  Mississippi  is 
your  alma  mater,  and  your  recreation  is  travelling, 
without  luggage,  in  wild  places.  Don't  worry." 
Later  I  called  at  a  branch  public  library,  and  asked 
for  any  of  Hugh  Walpole's  books.  They  were  all 
out.  So,  being  a  Person  of  Decision,  I  entered  a 
shop  and  bought  his  first  "The  Wooden  Horse,"  and 
his  latest,  "Jeremy." 

"The  Wocden  Horse"  did  not  interest  me  very 
much.  But  "Jeremy"!  I  delighted  in  it.  I  de 
light  in  it.  It  is  the  best  book  about  a  boy  that  I 
have  ever  read,  not  cnly  Jeremy  himself,  but  hi* 
environment,  his  people,  his  home  life.  It  is  told 


288  Authors  and  f 

to  ripples  of  humour ;  the  characterisation  is  neat. 
The  people  are  beautifully  observed.  Yes,  a  very 
charming  book.  His  best  book  by  a  long  way. 
In  future,  when  I  am  asked  what  I  know  about 
Hugh  Walpole,  I  shall  answer:  "He  wrote 
'Jeremy.'  " 


S3.     MRS.  HUMPHRY  WARD 

BEING  an  Arnold  in  England  is,  I  suppose, 
something  like  being  a  Lodge  in  America. 
Born  into  the  Arnold  family,  granddaughter  of  the 
famous  Dr.  Arnold  of  Rugby,  known  to  every 
reader  of  "Tom  Brown's  Schooldays";  niece  of 
Matthew  Arnold ;  married  to  a  Fellow  and  Tutor 
of  Brasenose  College,  Oxford,  Mrs.  Humphry 
Ward  lived  in  an  atmosphere  of  culture,  and  in  an 
environment  of  intellect,  breeding,  and  high  pur 
poses  that  the  ordinary  person  reads  about,  but 
seldom  experiences. 

She  knew  everybody  of  importance — Scholars  and 
Statesmen,  Dukes  and  Debutantes,  Ambassadors 
and  Artists,  Bishops,  Poets,  Novelists,  Historians, 
and  Politicians. 

From  the  best  society  in  Oxford  she  passed  to  the 
best  society  in  London  when  her  husband,  T. 
Humphry  Ward,  was  appointed  art  critic  of  the 
Times  and  leader  writer. 

Culture,  breeding,  and  well-being  mark  her  books, 
and  was  one  reason  for  their  immense  popularity: 
it  also  marks  her  Literary  Recollections  wherein 
we  move  through  a  society  in  which  high  thinking, 
and  meeting  eminent  people,  is  the  routine  of  each 
day.  Think  of  calling  Matthew  Arnold  uncle; 
think  of  choosing  nine  books  for  Lord  Acton's  bed- 


290  Authors  and  I 

side  when  he  visited  the  Wards  at  Stocks,  their 
country  house;  think  of  hearing  Mr.  Gladstone  say- 
in  private  conversation — "There  are  still  two  things 
left  for  me  to  do.  One  is  to  carry  Home  Rule; 
the  other  is  to  prove  the  intimate  connection  between 
the  Hebrew  and  Olympian  revelations";  think  of 
being  in  a  railway  carriage  with  Mr.  Arthur  Bal- 
four  while  he  was  reading  Green's  "Prolegomena 
to  Ethics." 

To  the  large  world  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  was 
knowrn  as  a  most  readable  and  most  helpful  novelist, 
with  a  fascinating  power  of  depicting  girls.  Her 
young  men,  usually  rising  personages  of  good  family 
and  good  looks,  are  not  as  convincing  to  males  as 
are  her  young  women.  Mr.  W.  L.  George  in  his 
division  of  British  novelists  into  the  neo-Victorian, 
the  Edwardian,  and  the  neo-Georgian  groups  does 
not  mention  Mrs.  Ward.  Personally,  I  prefer  her 
books  to  those  of  Mr.  W.  L.  George.  Nothing 
Mr.  George  has  written  has  affected  me  like  "Hel- 
beck  of  Bannisdale"  and  "Eleanor."  I  do  not  pre 
tend  to  have  read  all  Mrs.  Ward's  novels,  for  she 
was  rather  prolific,  and  her  books  do  not  permit 
themselves  to  be  skipped;  but  all  that  I  am 
acquainted  with  are  on  the  side  of  right  living,  right 
thinking,  and  aspiration,  and  I  find  them  a  deal 
more  consolatory  and  stimulating  than  many  of 
the  works  by  members  of  the  neo-Victorian,  the 
Edwardian,  and  the  neo-Georgian  schools.  I 
imagine  that  Mrs.  Ward  would  have  been  quite 
pleased  and  proud  simply  to  be  called  a  Victorian 
novelist,  that  is,  one  who  is  concerned  with  world 


Mrs.  Humphry  Jt'ard  291 

movements  rather  than  with  local  movements.  Mr. 
W.  L.  George  announces  his  recreation  (see  "Who's 
Who")  as  "Self-Advertisement."  Mrs.  Ward's 
recreation  was  (I  knew  her) — Doing  Good  with  an 
Air  (the  Arnold  Air). 

It  is  many  years  since  I  read  "Robert  Elsmere," 
which  was  published  in  1888,  but  I  well  remember 
the  discussion  it  aroused  and  its  popularity  which 
was  greater,  I  believe,  in  America  than  in  England. 
More  than  500,000  copies  were  sold  in  the  United 
States.  It  was  selling  well  before  Mr.  Gladstone's 
famous  review  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  but  it 
was  that  review  that  hastened  the  pace  and  made 
"Robert  Elsmere"  the  best  seller  of  the  day.  It 
was  begun  in  1885,  the  writing  of  it  took  nearly 
three  years,  and  when  it  was  finished  in  March, 
1887,  writes  Mrs.  Ward,  "I  came  out  from  my 
tiny  writing  room,  shaken  with  tears,  and  wonder 
ing,  as  I  sat  alone  on  the  floor,  by  the  fire,  in  the 
front  room,  what  life  would  be  like,  now  that  the 
book  was  done." 

That  was  quite  the  right  way  to  behave  in  Victorian 
times,  and  the  right  answer  to  the  tears  was,  of 
course,  to  write  more  novels.  This  the  author 
proceeded  to  do,  and  to  remove  in  time  from  Russell 
Square  to  Grosvenor  Place,  facing  the  gardens  of 
Buckingham  Palace,  and  from  Haslemere,  which 
was  becoming  quite  suburban,  to  Stocks,  a  beautiful 
little  estate  near  Tring  in  Hertfordshine. 
"Robert  Elsmere,"  which  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
said  was  "the  most  effective  and  popular  novel  we 
have  had  since  'Uncle  Tom's  Cabin/"  was  not 


292  Authors  and  I 

Mrs.  Ward's  first  book.  It  was  preceded  by  "Milly 
and  Oily,"  1881,  a  story  for  children  that  "wrote 
itself,"  a  translation  of  Amiel's  "Journal,"  1885, 
and  "Miss  Bretherton,"  1886.  Before  that  there 
was  hard  intellectual  preparation  for  her  chosen 
career  of  letters  with  a  leaning  toward  exegesis, 
not  as  arduous  and  thorough  a  preparation  as  that 
of  George  Eliot,  but  a  preparation,  in  each  case, 
for  a  life  of  plain  living  and  high  thinking,  and  in 
each  case  the  writing  of  fiction  sprang  uneasily  but 
inevitably  from  severer  studies.  To  each  fiction 
eventually  revealed  itself  as  the  right  method  of 
self-expression. 

Among  the  future  novelist's  intellectual  preparations 
were  several  articles  on  early  Spanish  Kings  and 
Bishops,  and  on  the  origins  of  modern  Spain;  a 
pamphlet  on  "Unbelief  and  Sin";  magazine  papers, 
articles  for  the  Times,  and  the  translation  of 
Amiel's  Journal  Intime;  then  "Miss  Bretherton," 
suggested  by  the  brilliant  success  in  1883  of  Mary 
Anderson,  and  so  to  "Robert  Elsmere." 
Her  philanthropic  efforts  alone  would  be  sufficient 
for  most  lives.  She  created,  and  was  the  guiding 
power  of  the  Passmore  Edwards  Settlement:  she 
founded  the  Invalid  Children's  School;  she  made 
time  to  help  in  any  movement  for  the  Public  Wel 
fare. 

A  full  life,  a  life  crowded  with  effort  and  interest, 
a  life  that  any  woman  of  intellect  and  vision  would 
delight  to  live.  And  in  it  three  unique  episodes. 
She  called  the  magnificent  Matthew  Arnold — Uncle 


Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  293 

Matt,  she  was  reviewed  by  Gladstone,  and  she  sat 
in  the  City  of  London  as  a  Woman  Magistrate. 
Happily  she  saw  the  end  of  the  Great  War,  in 
which  and  for  which  she  worked  so  splendidly  with 
pen  and  tongue.  The  name  of  Arnold,  through 
her,  has  gained  fresh  lustre. 


54.    WILLIAM  WATSON 

I  HAVE  known  many  poets.  They  are  a  touchy 
lot,  and  to  remain  on  friendly  terms  it  is  neces 
sary  to  control  one's  conduct  carefully.  I  seem  to 
remember  two  or  three  occasions  when  high  and 
hasty  words  swept  between  Sir  William  Watson 
and  myself.  (He  was  created  a  knight  in  1917. 
Richly  he  deserved  it,  and  I  must  proffer  him  his 
title  once ;  but  he  is,  and  always  will  be  to  me  plain 
William  Watson,  Yorkshireman  and  Poet.) 
What  were  our  spasmodic  quarrels  about?  Ques 
tions  of  the  day — the  Boer  War,  vivisection,  and  so 
on.  He  feels  things  deeply,  has  strong  views;  but 
he  is  also  magnanimous  and  quick  to  forgive  and  to 
forget.  Once  I  remember  he  abruptly  left  a  dinner 
table  because  I  had  rattled  out  something  obnoxious 
to  him  (he  is  a  strong  anti-vivisectionist).  He 
strode  from  the  room  erect  and  stiff,  and  I  played 
with  my  food,  sorry  and  angry,  trying  to  look 
unconcerned.  In  three  minutes  he  returned,  still 
erect  and  stiff,  but  with  his  strong,  mobile  face 
(full  eyes  and  square  jaw)  suffused  with  a  com 
panionable  smile — "Such  old  friends,"  he  said,  in  his 
quick,  sententious  way,  "must  not  quarrel  over  an 
opinion,"  and  his  hand  shot  out. 
Magnanimous,  courteous,  touchy,  forgiving,  with  a 
vast  capacity  for  indignation  and  scorn,  the  foe  of 
294 


William  Watson  295 

slippery  thinking,  and  slipshod  writing,  something 
of  a  lonely  figure,  belonging  to  no  clique  or  school, 
communing,  I  am  sure,  in  his  long,  lonely  walks 
through  the  Yorkshire  dales,  with  the  writers  with 
whom  he  is  most  in  sympathy — say  Samuel  Johnson, 
John  Milton,  and  Wordsworth — such  is  William 
Watson. 

If  poetry  were  the  natural  vehicle  of  expression  for 
mankind,  and  if  newspapers  were  written  in  verse, 
William  Watson  would  be  the  first  editorial  writer 
in  the  land.  He  watches  events  with  eagle  eye, 
bruised  heart,  and  impassioned  pen.  He  might  have 
been  Poet  Laureate  years  ago  if — if — he  were  a 
courtier.  That  is  just  what  he  is  not.  Righteous 
anger  inspires  his  sonnets.  We  may  agree  or  dis 
agree  with  his  belligerent  literary  activities,  alwa>s 
expressed  in  polished  classical  language;  we  may 
have  sympathy  or  antipathy  for  the  folk  or  cause 
he  chastises  or  cherishes,  but  we  never  doubt  his 
integrity.  He  sets  himself  to  write  in  verse,  for 
verse  is  his  natural  expression,  and  in  my  opinion  it 
is,  alas,  when  he  is  in  his  leading  article  mood 
that  his  poetry  is  the  least  attractive.  He  delights 
to  honour  his  friends  in  verse.  Sometimes,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  address  to  Richard  Holt  Hutton,  the 
result  is  memorable: 

And  not  uncrowned  with  honors  ran 

My  days,  and  not  without  a  boast  shall  end! 

For  I  was  Shakespeare's  countryman 
And  were  not  thou  my  friend? 

In  some  the.c  is  something  pedestrian  as  in  the 
beginning  of  the  poem  to  H.  D.  Trail!: 


296  Authors  and  I 

Traill,  'tis  a  twelve  months'  space  and  more 
Since  feet  of  mine  have  sought  your  door.  .  .  . 

Yet  how  apt  he  is.  Here  is  the  second  stanza  of 
his  poem  to  Austin  Dobson: 

Of  wilder  birth  this  muse  of  mine, 
Hill-cradled,  and  baptised  with  brine; 
And  'tis  for  her  a  sweet  despair 
To  watch  that  courtly  step  and  air! 

And  how  apt  are  his  epigrams.  There  are  pages 
of  them,  each  has  its  point,  twist  and  lilt,  and,  when 
necessary,  its  lordly  procession  of  words  as  in  "After 
Reading  Tamburlaine  the  Great": 

Your  Marlowe's  page  I  close,  my  Shakespeare's  ope; 
How  welcome — after  gong  and  cymbal's  din — 
The  continuity,  the  long  slow  slope 
And  vast  curves  of  the  gradual  violin! 

But  his  full  flight  is  in  the  odes  and  elegies.  "What 
magnificent  rhetoric  there  is  in  the  "Hymn  to  the 
Sea."  How  full  and  rolling  it  is!  I  have  read  it 
aloud  to  two  or  three  people.  Not  one  of  them 
has  been  able  to  catch  at  any  definite  meaning,  and 
vet  I  have  left  them  murmuring  such  sonorous  lines 


Now  while  the  vernal  impulsion  makes  lyrical   all  that 

hath  language, 
While,  through  the  veins  of  the  Earth,  riots  the  ichor  of 

spring.  .  .  . 

His  tribute  to  Wordsworth,  perhaps  the  most 
esteemed  of  his  poems,  draws  nearer  to  the  average 
heart.  What  could  be  truer  or  finer  than  the  fol 
lowing  stanzas — essential  William  Watson: 


William  H' at  son  297 

Not  Milton's  keen,  translunar  music  thine; 

Not  Shakespeare's  cloudless,  boundless  human  view, 
Not  Shelley's  flush  of  rose  on  peaks  divine; 

Nor  yet  the  wizard  twilight  Coleridge  knew. 

What  hadst  thou  that  could  make  so  large  amends 
For  all  thou  hadst  not  and  thy  peers  possessed, 

Motion  and  fire,  swift  means  to  radiant  ends? 
Thou  hadst,  for  weary  feet,  the  gift  of  rest. 

From  Shelley's  dazzling  glow  or  thunderous  haze, 
From  Byron's  tempest-anger,  tempest-mirth, 

Men  turned  to  thee  and  found — not  blast  and  blaze, 
Tumult  of  tottering  heavens,  but  peace  on  earth. 

It  will  be  observed  that  he  is  a  reflective  poet;  that 
he  fashions  his  numbers  with  extreme  care ;  that  he 
is  dignified,  and  a  studious  walker  in  the  older 
ways;  that  he  has  no  patience  with  free  verse,  and 
no  love  for  the  free  and  easy  jolt  of,  say,  Kipling's 
"Barrack  Room  Ballads,"  and  a  horror  at  the  liber 
ties  certain  American  writers  (including,  I  am  sure, 
baseball  reporters,  and  the  artists  of  the  comic 
pages)  take  with  the  English  tongue. 
He  is  ever  loyal  to  Johnson  and  Milton:  his  latest 
poem,  "The  Super-human  Antagonists,"  six  hundred 
lines  of  rhymed  decasyllabic  verse,  is,  as  the  Times 
says,  "rhetorical  with  a  rhetoric  that  he  seems  to 
have  learned  very  thoroughly  from  all  the  great 
poetic  rhetoricians  of  the  past."  His  rhetoric  is 
intentional.  Happy  accidents,  gushes  of  emotion, 
the  things  that  dazzle  and  move  us  in  Browning  are 
not  for  him.  He  weighs  his  theme,  shapes  it, 
polishes  it,  and  conducts  it  through  courses  of 
•onerous  rhetoric  of  which  he  is  proud,  and  which 


298  Authors  and  I 

is  the  chief  asset  of  his  expression.  He  has  written 
an  essay  in  which  he  pauses  "to  rescue  this  word 
rhetoric  from  the  evil  habit  into  which  it  has  latterly- 
fallen  by  no  innate  fault  of  its  own.  .  .  .  The 
simple  truth  is  that  there  is  a  tinsel  rhetoric  and 
there  is  a  golden  rhetoric." 

William  Watson's  rhetoric  is  golden.     He  knows  it. 
We  know  it.     The  point  is  not  arguable.     It  is 
settled.    His  poetry  and  prose  show  it. 
His  prose! 

All  good  poets  write  good  prose,  all  except  Swin 
burne.  Cast  over  in  your  mind  a  few  modern  names 
— Matthew  Arnold,  Francis  Thompson,  W.  B. 
Yeats,  Lawrence  Binyon,  Henry  Newbolt,  Arthur 
Symons,  Lionel  Johnson,  Richard  Le  Gallienne. 
WTilliam  Watson's  admirable  prose,  balanced, 
sweeping,  rhythmic,  would,  cut  cunningly  into  un 
equal  lengths,  make  excellent  Free  Verse.  I  hope  no 
one  will  do  it.  The  sonnet  of  indignation  the  poet 
would  compose  would  be  terrible.  Let  his  small 
book  of  prose  called  "Pencraft"  remain  as  it  is,  a 
perfect  example  of  the  welding  of  matter  and  man 
ner,  a  definite  statement  by  a  trained  writer  of  the 
aims  and  ideals  of  his  craft,  the  apologia  of  one  who 
stands  almost  alone,  rooted  in  older  conditions, 
obedient  but  not  subservient  to  the  masters  of  a 
former  day,  and  receiving  with  distrust,  and  scorn, 
so  courteous  that  none  can  take  offence,  the  wild 
and  whirring  prose  experiments  of  the  present  day. 
Were  I  asked  to  suggest  a  textbook  of  literature  for 
high  schools,  or  even  for  colleges,  I  would  unhesitat 
ingly  recommend  "Pencraft."  There  is  no  better 


William  Watson  299 

introduction   to   the  continuity,   the   austerity  and 
the  majesty  of  Letters. 

One    does    not    associate    William    Watson    with 
humour.    Sarcasm,  yes;  irony,  yes;  disdain,  yes;  the 
look    and    the   cut    of    contempt,    yes    (see    "The 
Woman  with  the  Serpent's  Tongue")  ;  but   until 
I  read  his  imaginary  interview  with  Dr.  Johnson, 
printed  in  his  book  of  essays  called  "Excursions  in 
Criticisms,"    with    the    amiable    sub-title,    "Bein^ 
Some  Prose  Recreations  of  a  Rhymer,"  I  did  not 
realise   that  he  possessed   a   recondite  humour  not 
unworthy   of   the    learned    Doctor   himself.      This 
interview  is  entirely  delightful  and  entirely  wise. 
Dr.   Johnson   on    Rossetti   is   what   my   American 
friends  would   call   "a   scream";   and   as   for   Dr. 
Johnson  on  Matthew  Arnold  what  could  be  better 
than   this?— "I   lament  that  there  is  much   in  his 
verse  that  is  alien  to  my  apprehension— much  that 
reflects,  apparently,  a  mental  world  of  which  I  have 
no  private  report." 

But  Sir  William  Watson  is  a  poet.  Perhaps  he 
will  not  thank  me  for  extolling  him  as  a  proseman, 
so  I  will  end  with  the  opening  stanza  of  his  poem 
called  "The  Unknown  God,"  which  has  been  beat 
ing  in  my  heart  ever  since  I  first  read  it  years  ago— 

When,  overarched  by  gorgeous  night, 
I  wave  my  trivial  self  away; 
When  all  I  was  to  all  men's  sight 
Shares  the  erasure  of  the  day; 
Then  do  I  cast  my  cumbering  load, 
Then  do  I  gain  a  sense  of  God. 


D 


55.     H.  G.  WELLS 

EAR  H.  G.!     Although  I  have  known  him 

since  1894  I  have  never  heard  his  intimates 

call  him  anything  but  H.  G.     Even  his  wife  ad- 
dresses  him  so. 

Dear    H.    G.!      I    made   his   acquaintance   oddly. 
Harry    Gust,    Editor   of   the   Pall  Mall    Gazette, 
when  he  was  not  involved  in  a  crisis  would  encour 
age  me  to  be  amusing.     One  day  I  said  to  him, 
want  a  new  friend,  please."    A  few  hours  later  an 
office  boy  came  to  my  room  (I  was  then  Editor  c 
the  Pall  Mall  Budget  and  said,  "Mr.  Gust's  com 
pliments  and  'eve  got  a  new  friend  for  yer,  sir. 
I  hastened  to  Mr.  Gust's  apartment   (it  was  more 
than  a  room)  and  there,  a  little  figure,  hunched  up 
on  a  magnificent  Maple  couch  was  H.  G.  Wells. 
He    smiled.      I    smiled.      His    overcoat    was    not 
Poole's,  but  his  face  was  like  an  electrified  note  of 
interrogation,  questioning  and  absorbing  everything. 
He   was   then   writing   Wellsian    articles   for    the 
Pall  Mall   Gazette,  and   there  was  in   them   that 
which   prompted  me  one   day   to  suggest 
should    write   stories   for   the   Pall   Mall   Budget. 
He  was  game;  he  was  always  game;   and   thos 
amazing  tales  "the  jolly  art  of  making  something 
very  bright  and  moving,"  to  quote  his  own  words 
(we  called   them   "Single   Sitting   Stories")    came 
300 


H.  G.  Wells  301 

into  the  office  at  the  rate  of  two  a  week,  in  copper 
plate  handwriting  with  the  regularity  of  a  pendu 
lum.     So  H.  G.  began  his  career  as  a  writer  of 
fiction.     I  touched  the  button  only,  or  as  he  neatly, 
puts  it  in  the  introduction  to  "The  Country  of  the 
Blind":    "Mr.  Lewis  Hind's  (it's  the  first  time  he 
ever  addressed  me  as  Mr.)    indicating  finger  had 
shown  me  an  amusing  possibility  of  the  mind." 
His  unresting,  exploring  mind,  so  curious  and  com 
bative,  is  very  orderly.     So  are  his  habits — metic 
ulously  so.    His  imaginative  schemes,  like  his  house 
keeping  books,  are  tabulated  and  arranged  with  the 
precision  of  an  accountant.     He  once  showed  me 
a  fixture  of  pigeonholes  in  his  study:  he  indicated 
the  contents  of  three  of  these  pigeonholes:  they  con 
tained   the   manuscripts   of   his   next   three   books, 
neatly  typewritten  by  Mrs.  Wells,  each  labelled  with 
the  year  in  which  it  was  to  appear.    H.  G.  discarded 
the  literary  agent  some  time  ago:   he  is  his  own 
agent,  and  a  good  one,  surely.     Portions,  if  not  all 
of  the  text  of  "Mr.  Britling,"  "Joan  and  Peter,"  and 
"The  Undying  Fire,"  appeared  serially  in  high-class 
weekly  publications  in  England  and  America,  the 
editors  of  which  would  be  aghast  at  the  mere  sug 
gestion  of  publishing  an  ordinary  novel. 
H.  G.  Wells  is  a  complex  man  of  letters,  with  a 
strong  natural  scientific  and  socialistic  bias.     He  is 
a  fine  teller  of  tales — imaginative,  inventive,  socio 
logical,  humorous,   appalling,   technical;  he  is  also 
an  educationist  and  an  inquirer  into  what  people  call 
the  mystery  of  things.     The  war  turned  his  agile 
mind,  and  burdened  heart,  into  a  consideration  of 


302  Authors  and  I 

the  Whence,  the  Why,  and  the  Whither!     He  is 
pursuing  the  quest  with  characteristic  pertinacity, 
and  possibly  after  many  years  of  heroic  intellectual 
strenuosity  he  may  reach  the  point  which  he  might 
easily  have  reached  at  his  mother's  knee. 
I  sent  "Mr.  Britlmg  Sees  It  Through"  to  a  major 
in  the  British  Army.     He  read  it  in  the  intervals 
of  hard  fighting,  and  he  wrote  me  fourteen  pages 
about  "Mr.  Britling."     They  were  highly  compli 
mentary,  with  one  exception.     Mr.   Britling,  you 
will  remember,  comes  to  the  conclusion  at  the  end 
of  the  book  that  we  must  carry  on  and  "do  our 
best."  The  major,  who  is  a  spiritual  man,  resented 
this,  and  urged,  at  some  length  and  with  rare  elo 
quence,  that  we  must  do  more  than  "our  best" :  we 
must  do  "God's  best."   I  sent  this  lay  sermon  to  H. 
G.  Wells.  He  replied  by  quoting  the  title  of  his  next 
two  books,  not  then  published,  "God  the  Invisible 
King,"  and  "The  Soul  of  a  Bishop."    The  Major, 
I  believe,  has  read  them;  but  he  has  not  yet  in 
formed  me  that  he  is  satisfied. 
I,  who  have  followed  his  imaginative  and  intellec 
tual  career  from  the  beginning,  who  have  known 
him,  and  had  long  walks  and  talks  with  him,  find  no 
confusion,  only  development,   in  the  record  of  his 
agile  mind  expressed  in  his  books.     He  is  a  seeker. 
His  thought  is  always  on  the  wing:   it   does  not 
rest.     Most  minds,  as  the  years  go  by,  recline  into 
apathy  and  resent  change  and  the  new  thing.    The 
mind   of   H.   G.  Wells   is  always  alert,   more  so 
today  than  ever.     There  is  much  of  Mr.  Britling 
in  him,  but  he  is  tougher  than  Mr.  B.,  and  he  has 


//.  G.  Wells  303 

learnt  to  drive  a  motor  car  better.  Mr.  Britling  is 
a  portion  of  himself,  and  the  externals  of  that 
moving  record  of  the  hideous  impact  of  the  war  on 
a  sensitive  nature  are  drawn,  in  large  measure,  from 
the  happy  life  he  leads  at  Dunmow  in  Essex. 
Visitors  ask  themselves  when  he  does  his  work,  for 
he  always  seems  to  have  time  for  pianola  playing, 
for  games  with  his  children,  such  wonderful  games, 
for  dancing  in  the  barn,  for  hockey  on  Sunday  after 
noon  and  for  talks  that  explore  and  leap  and  run. 
At  stated  times  of  the  day  he  disappears.  Then, 
I  suppose,  he  does  his  work,  but,  however  intense 
his  absorption  in  it  may  be,  he  casts  care  away  when 
he  rejoins  his  guests.  Those  eyes,  grey-blue  and 
watchful,  small  and  searching,  miss  nothing,  and 
he  docs  not  husband  his  thoughts,  for  they  are  so 
many,  and  they  strike  out,  quick  and  illuminating, 
on  the  anvil  of  any  topic  that  is  started. 
The  Pall  Mall  Gazette  and  Budget  gave  him  his 
start:  W.  E.  Henley  published  "The  Time  Ma 
chine"  in  the  New  Review*;  and  the  Saturday  Re 
view  and  Nature  were  only  too  glad  to  print  his 
critical  and  technical  articles.  He  had  studied  at 
the  Royal  College  of  Science,  and  was  by  this  time 
a  B.Sc.  Not  a  bad  beginning  for  a  youth  who 
had  no  advantages.  His  father  was  a  professional 
cricketer,  and  this  world-famous  man  still  keeps, 
framed  in  the  place  of  honour  in  his  study,  a 
cricket  card  showing  the  prowess  of  Papa  Wells 
with  the  cricket  ball. 

The    days    of  the    Saturday    Review    and    Nature 
articles  passed.     H.  G.  was  now  merging  into  a 


304  Authors  and  I 

novelist.  "The  Wonderful  Visit,"  "The  Island  of 
Dr.  Moreau"  and  "The  Wheels  of  Chance"  fol 
lowed.  The  rest  you  know. 

His  eager  mind  is  now  deep  in  the  problems  of 
reconstruction,  self-determination,  the  rights  and 
the  wrongs  of  small  nations  and  so  on.  But  his 
imagination  still  plays.  He  is  no  pedant.  He  has 
vission.  He  may  like  the  following  story,  not  as 
imaginary  as  it  may  seem: 

An  Irish  American  and  an  English  Englishman 
were  talking.  Said  the  Irish  American,  "I  suppose 
if  the  League  of  Nations  had  been  properly  drawn 
the  English  would  restore  Gibraltar  to  Spain." 
The  English  Englishman  looked  glum.  Suddenly 
his  face  lightened.  "Why  not?  And  of  course, 
America  would  give  back  New  York  to  the  Eng 
lish." 

It  was  the  Irish  American's  turn  to  look  glum. 
Then  he  smiled  and  said — "And  the  English  would 
restore  New  York  to  the  Dutch,  and  the  Dutch 
would  give  it  back  to  the  Indians." 
"Surely,"  said  the  English  Englishman,  "but  that 
wouldn't  be  the  end.  There  were  aboriginal  inhab 
itants;  there  must  have  been  in  remote  antiquity 
a  first  aboriginal,  the  very  first  man  to  walk  Man 
hattan.  Suppose,  by  some  miracle,  his  descendants 
could  be  traced,  even  that  would  not.  end  our 
altruistic  inquiry.  This  first  man  would  be  a  mere 
dot  in  the  wonder  of  eartn  and  sky,  of  rivers  that 
race  to  the  sea,  of  springtime,  of  the  sun  and  the 
night  sky.  It  would  be  only  logical  to  restore  these 
wonders  to  their  original  owner." 


H.  G.  Wells  305 

"Yes?"  said  the  Irish  American. 
"New  York,"  murmured  the  English  Englishman, 
"would  have  to  be  restored  to  God.    Which  is  pre 
cisely  what  the  faithful  want  to  do." 
To  look  through  a  list  of  the  books  by  H.  G.  Wells 
is  to  be  filled  with  amazement  and  pride.    To  each 
his  choice:  to  one  "Kips,"  to  another,  "Tony  Bun- 
gay,"  to  another  "Mr.  Britling  Sees  It  Through." 
I  cannot  make  any  choice,  but  as  I  sit  here  I  recall 
with  profound  admiration  Section   15,  of  Chapter 
XIII,  of  "Joan  and  Peter,"  where  the  wounded 
Flying  Man  seeks,  and  finds  the  Lord  God. 
How  sane  is  this  Flying  Man's  delirium! 
How  inexhaustible  is  the  mind  of  H.  G. ! 
He  has  travelled  far.     On  the  last  page  of  "Joan 
and  Peter"  there  is  this — 

There  was  a  light  upon  his  life,  and  the  truth  was 
that  he  could  not  discover  the  source  of  the  light 
nor  define  its  nature;  there  was  a  presence  in  the 
world  about  him  that  made  all  life  worth  while, 
and  yet  it  was  nameless  and  incomprehensible.  It 
was  the  essence  beyond  reality;  it  was  the  heart  of 
all  things.  .  .  . 

Yes,  he  has  travelled  far.     He  is  still  travelling. 
And  perhaps,  with  his  "Outline  of  History,"  he  has 
inaugurated  a  real  system  of  education. 


56.     EDITH  WHARTON 

I  WONDER  what  Mrs.  Wharton  thinks  of 
O.  Henry;  and  if  there  are  still  people  in  Eng 
land  who  picture  America  from  the  people  and 
scenes  in  Mrs.  Wharton's  books. 
When  I  first  read  "The  Greater  Inclination,"  I 
unconsciously  accepted  the  stage  direction  of  a  New 
port  drawing-room  in  "The  Twilight  of  the  Gods," 
as  characteristic  of  America  and  the  way  they  go 
on  there.  Here  it  is: 

"A  Newport  drawing-room.  Tapestries,  flowers, 
bric-a-brac.  Through  the  windows,  a  geranium- 
edged  lawn,  the  cliffs  and  the  sea.  Isabel  Warland 
sits  reading.  Lucius  Warland  enters  in  flannels  and 
a  yachting  cap." 

Also  I  pictured  New  York  as  the  scene  of  the 
Gildermere  ball  in  "A  Cup  of  Cold  Water,"  at  the 
close  of  which,  you  remember,  Woburn  is  disturbed 
because  the  drowsy  footman  handed  him  "a  ready- 
made  overcoat  with  an  imitation  astrachan  collar 
in  place  of  his  own  unimpeachable  Poole  gar 
ment." 

Similarly  in  an  earlier  decade  "nice"  America,  and 
that  was  the  only  America  that  it  was  my  duty  to 
know  anything  about,  was  enshrined  within  the 
covers  of  W.  D.  Howells'  charming  novels.  As  for 
Washington  I  accepted  with  pleasure  the  present- 
306 


Edith  Wharion  307 

mcnt  by  Mrs.  Burnett  in  "Through  One  Adminis 
tration."  Novels  of  manners  and  of  place  have 
much  to  answer  for.  When  I  visit  Kentucky  I  am 
sure  that  I  shall  not  have  the  vivid  impressions  of 
the  Blue  Grass  State  that  I  derive  from  James  Lane 
Allen  and  John  Fox,  Jr. 

"Are  you  an  admirer  of  Mrs.  Wharton?"  I  asked 
an  Intelligent  Woman. 

"Admirer?  I  was  brought  up  on  her.  In  my  first 
season  I  was  always  watching  for  the  exquisite, 
social  calamities  that  she  describes.  It's  my  opinion 
they  don't  really  happen.  Life  isn't  nearly  as  subtle 
as  novelists  pretend." 

"Which  is  your  favourite  among  her  stories?" 
She  picked  a  cherry  from  the  bowl  and  reflected 
while  she  nibbled  it.     "It's  odd,"  she  said,  "but  I 
can't  remember  any  of  her  books,  neither  the  plots 
nor  the  characters — oh,  yes,  there  was  Lily  Bart 
in  'The  House  of  Mirth.'    I  was  terribly  sorry  for 
Lily.     There   are   lots   of   Lilys   about.     Only   a 
woman  could  have  drawn  her." 
"How  about  'Ethan  Frome'?"  I  asked. 
She  shook  her  curls.     "One  can't  read  everything. 
But   I   liked   'Summer.'     If  you  want  me  to  say 
something  definite  about  Mrs.  Wharton  I  shouldn't 
wonder  if  she  wasn't  better  when  she  is  dealing  with 
people  a  bit  lower  socially  than  the  Newport  and 
Long  Island  lot." 
"Did  you  ever  meet  her?" 

"Once,  at  a  luncheon  party.  Henry  James  was 
there,  I  remember,  and  my  neighbour,  a  young  dip 
lomat,  bored  me  with  explaining  just  how  far 


308  Authors  and  I 

Edith  Wharton  derived  from  Henry  James.  In 
my  opinion  she  beats  him:  she  has  more  red  blood. 
The  diplomat  said  one  clever  thing — it  wasn't  orig 
inal,  I  think  he  fathered  it  on  Henry  James — that 
Mrs.  Wharton  showed  'the  masculine  conclusion 
tending  to  crown  the  feminine  observation.'  " 
"What  is  Mrs.  Wharton  like?" 
"Oh,  that  luncheon  party  was  a  long  time  ago,  but 
I  remember  I  decided  that  she  was  just  like  what 
I  expected  she  would  be — browny  hair,  exquisitely 
dressed,  a  finished  manner,  and  an  air,  oh,  you 
know  the  kind  of  air  that  glides  about  European 
letters  and  art,  and  looks  startled  when  anyone 
mentions  America/' 

I  knew  what  this  dear  lady  meant,  for  I  had  just 
been  trying  to  read  Edith  Wharton's  "Italian  Back 
grounds,"  and  found  progression  through  the  pages 
difficult.  It  is  the  kind  of  culture,  excessive  cul 
ture,  that  drives  me  to  O.  Henry  or  at  any  rate  to 
Kipling.  On  the  first  page  I  found  this:  "To  pass 
from  the  region  of  the  obviously  picturesque — the 
country  contrived,  it  would  seem,  for  the  delectation 
of  the  cceur  a  poesie  facile — to  that  sophisticated 
landscape  where,  etc.,  etc." 

I  prefer  a  deeper  bite  in  travel  literature,  more 
directness  and  surprises,  such  as  we  find  in  Borrow, 
Stevenson,  Kipling,  Belloc,  and  Gissing.  But  it 
would  be  unfair  to  judge  Edith  Wharton  by  such 
culture  books  as  this,  or  "Italian  Villas"  or  "The 
Decoration  of  Houses,"  or  her  slim  volume  of  var 
nished  verse. 


Edith  Wharion  309 

Think  you  we  slept  within  the  Delphic  bower, 
What  time  our  victim  sought  Apollo's  grace? 
Nay,  drawn  into  ourselves,  in  that  deep  place 
Where  good  and  evil  meet,  we  bode  our  hour. 

Travels — in  Italy  or  France — evoke  her  preciosity: 
she  cannot  help  being  a  stylist  when  writing  of 
buildings  or  nature:  it  is  a  human  problem  that 
brings  out  the  distinction  of  this  subtle  writer.  Dur 
ing  a  score  of  years  or  so  I  can  look  back  on  a  dozen 
short  stories  by  Edith  Wharton  that  have  given  me 
immense  intellectual  and  aesthetic  pleasure.  And 
as  -or  her  long  novels,  those  who  have  not  read 
"T-  e  House  of  Mirth,"  "The  Fruit  of  the  Tree," 
and  The  Reef"  have  a  great  pleasure  in  store;  but 
the  rt  ider  must  make  up  his  mind  to  be  entertained 
by  "1;  dies  and  gentlemen,"  not  by  "men  and 
women."  As  Mr.  Francis  Hackett  observes,  Mrs. 
Wharton's  characters  are  not  the  kind  of  people 
with  whom  you  share  crackerjack  in  a  day  coach. 
And  yet  I  should  not  be  surprised  if  her  best  work 
was  not  "Ethan  Frome,"  a  New  England  story 
dealing  with  lowly  people,  folk  who  never  have  a 
servant  to  wait  upon  them  and  who  always  get  their 
own  morning  tea.  "Ethan  Frome"  has  an  intensity, 
a  pathos,  and  sympathy,  frigid  if  you  will,  but  sus 
tained  and  penetrating. 

With  the  breaking  out  of  war,  Edith  Wharton 
threw  herself  into  war  work,  and  as  the  struggle 
continued  she  wrote  little  sad  stories  about  soldiers. 
One  was  called  "The  Marne";  and  she  also  pro 
duced  an  amusing  and  suggestive  little  book  called 
"French  Ways  and  Their  Meaning."  These  did 


3io  Authors  and  I 

not  rouse  me  to  enthusiasm;  in  the  press  of  other 
avocations,  the  work  of  Edith  Wharton  had  slipped 
out  of  my  consideration. 

Suddenly  it  was  recalled  to  me — violently.  I  opened 
a  paper  one  day  and  read  that  E.  V.  Lucas  had 
expressed  to  an  interviewer  in  San  Francisco  his 
astonishment  and  annoyance  that  he  could  not  buy 
Edith  Wharton's  books  in  the  West.  "She  is  your 
greatest  woman  writer,"  he  said,  "and  it  seems 
extraordinary  to  me  that  I  could  find  none  of  her 
books  on  sale  in  the  West." 

This  interested  me,  as  when  I  left  London  in  1917, 
Lucas,  for  a  year  and  more,  had  been  reading  and 
praising  O.  Henry,  and  it  seemed  odd  that  a  man 
should  be  able  to  enjoy,  with  enthusiasm,  such  dis 
parate   temperaments   as    Edith    Wharton    and   O. 
Henry — Newport  and  Broadway. 
Having  decided  to  write  on  Edith  Wharton,  and 
having  only  one  of  her  books,  "The  Reef,"  I  went 
to  a  branch  public  library  and  borrowed  seventeen; 
also  three  volumes  containing  essays  on  her  work 
by  Hackett,  Underwood,  and  Follett. 
Then  I  invited  Lucas  to  luncheon  and  waved  his 
attention  to  the  couch  on  which  reposed  seventeen 
books  by  Edith  Wharton  and  three  about  her. 
Lucas  is  not  a  talkative  man ;  he  looked  them  over, 
smiled  his  grim  smile  and  said,  "You  take  your 
work  seriously." 
"So  do  you,"  I  answered. 

"I  want  to  read  'Ethan  Frome,' "  he  muttered,  as 
if  somebody  had  been  hindering  him  from  doing 
so. 


Edith  W \iarton  311 

I  offered  it  to  him.  He  shook  his  head.  "I  want 
it  on  board  ship.  There's  no  time  to  read  any 
thing  in  America." 

"Tell   me,"    I    said,    "how   can   you   who   adore 
O.  Henry  also  adore  Edith  Wharton?     She  deals 
mainly  with  the  smart  life  which  you  always  try  to 
avoid,  and  succeed  in  avoiding." 
"I  like  her  irony,"  he  mumbled. 
When  he  had  gone  it  struck  me   that  he  might 
have  said :    "You  adore  Memlinc  and  Matisse,  why 
shouldn't  I  adore  Edith  Wharton  and  O.  Henry?" 
If  he  had  been  a  girl,  I  suppose  that  I  should  have 
taken  a  copy  of  "Ethan  Frome"  to  the  steamer. 


57.    WALT  WHITMAN 

THE  centenary  of  the  birth  of  Walt  Whitman 
on  May  31,  1919,  turned  thought  to  him  who 
cried,  "The  Modem  Man  I  Sing." 
For  a  week  I  was  dipping,  diving,  and  plunging  into 
the  430  pages  of  "Leaves  of  Grass,"  that  ocean 
of  rushing,  soaring  observations  announcing  the 
awakening  spirit  of  America,  proclaiming  her  first 
great  poet,  soil  of  her  soil,  strong  as  a  mountain, 
sure  of  his  mission,  sure  of  himself,  sure  of  the 
reproductive  power  of  the  rough  songs  he  sang,  their 
tumultuous  beauty,  their  rugged  eloquence,  with 
scraps  of  tenderness  lighting  catalogues  of  words, 
himself  the  centre  of  all,  yet  conscious  all  the  while 
of  something  within  himself  untouched. 

.  .  .  Before  all  my  arrogant  poems  the  real  Me  stands 

yet  untouched,  untold, 
Withdrawn   far,    mocking   me   with   mock-congratulatory 

signs  and  bows, 
With  peals  of  distant  ironical  laughter  at  every  word  I 

have  written. 

To  us  in  London  in  the  late  eighties  there  were 
three  Americans  who  aroused  our  awakening  liter 
ary  minds  to  enthusiasm — Poe,  Bret  Harte,  and 
Walt  Whitman.  (Emerson  came  later  and  stayed 
longest.)  Poe  opened  to  us  the  macabre  in  prose, 
and  in  poetry  the  art  and  craft  of  melody.  Bret 
312 


Walt  Whitman  313 

Hartc  revealed  to  us  a  new  corner  of  life,  pic 
turesque,  riotous,  pathetic,  amusing,  but  it  was  only 
a  part  of  the  whole.  Walt  Whitman  showed  us  the 
whole,  expounded  that  vast,  voracious  America 
3,000  miles  away.  Here  was  a  new  poet,  a  new 
way  of  song,  a  new  country,  a  new  man  speaking  to 
each  one  of  us. 

My  songs  cease,  I  abandon  them, 

From  behind  the  screen  where  I  hid  I  advance  personally 

solely  to  you, 

Camerado,  this  is  no  book, 
Who  touches  this  touches  a  man. 

We  read  "Salut  au  Monde"  (—"What  do  you 
hear,  Walt  Whitman,"  he  asks,  "what  do  you  see, 
Walt  Whitman?").  We  realised  that  he  had 
thrown  rhyme  and  scansion  to  the  winds;  that  his 
Pegasus  took  the  bit  between  her  teeth  and  did  what 
she  willed;  that  form  and  tradition  were  meaning 
less  terms  to  him.  What  did  it  matter?  He  sang 
of  a  new  land,  in  a  new  way.  He  sang  the  love  of 
comrades,  one  brotherhood  throughout  the  wide 
world. 

My  spirit  has  pass'd   in  compassion   and  determination 

around  the  whole  earth, 
I  have   looked   for  equals   and   lovers   and   found   them 

ready  for  me  in  all  lands, 
I  think  some  divine  rapport  has  equalised  me  with  them. 

We  read  "Out  of  the  Cradle  Endlessly  Rocking" ; 
we  read  the  Lincoln  poems;  we  read  the  "Song  of 
the  Open  Road."  With  the  generosity  of  youth  we 
acclaimed  Walt  Whitman  everywhere,  "O  America, 


314  Authors  and  I 

because  you  build  for  manhood  I  build  for  you." 
Has  it  not  been  said  of  him  that  he  gave  America 
to  the  world  ?  We  made  Free  Verse  after  his  man 
ner;  Free  Verse  with  its  "long,  undulant  swell  and 
fall,"  its  unmetrical  rhythmic  cadences;  we  learned 
of  his  greetings,  "Howdy,"  and  "So  long";  of  his 
broad-brimmed  hat,  his  blue  flannel  shirt,  his  home 
spun  trousers  tucked  into  knee-high  boots;  we 
learned  of  his  services  in  the  war  as  nurse  and  com 
forter  to  soldiers,  and  how  he  had  said  that  those 
four  years,  1861  to  1865,  made  it  possible  for  him 
to  write  "Leaves  of  Grass." 

Not  youth  pertains  to  me 

Not  delicatesse — I  cannot  beguile  the  time  with  talk; 
Awkward  in  the  parlour,  neither  a  dancer  nor  elegant, 
In  the  learn'd  coterie  sitting  constraint   and  still— for 

learning  inures  not  to  me; 
Beauty,  knowledge,  inure  not  to  me — yet,  there  are  two  or 

three  things  inure  to  me, 
I  have  nourished  the  wounded,  and  sooth'd  many  a  dying 

soldier, 

And  at  intervals,  waiting,  or  in  the  midst  of  camp, 
Composed  these  songs. 

This  buccaneer  of  song  became  a  part  of  us.  We 
hailed  him  as  America's  great  poet.  And  while  his 
fame  broadened  in  England  we  learned  with  sur 
prise  that  America  was  not  taking  kindly  to  her 
lusty  son.  Even  Emerson,  almost  enthusaistic  at 
first,  tempered  his  admiration.  The  elder  poets, 
the  elder  critics,  and  the  cultured  public  did  not 
take  easily  to  Walt.  He  was  too  Waltish:  his 
methods  were  too  un-European,  and  as  for  his  sub 
jects,  why  they  were  everyday  affairs.  And  his 


Walt  Whitman  315 

frankness  and  roughness!  Longfellow  and  Tenny 
son  were  poets,  "Excelsior"  and  "Enoch  Arden" 
were  poetry,  but  this  amazing  and  uncouth,  voluble 
savage,  what  was  he? 

I  loafe  and  invite  my  soul, 

I  lean  and  loafe  at  my  ease  observing  a  spear  of  summer 
grass. 

Clear  the  way  there,  Jonathan! 

I  love  to  look  on  the  Stars  and  Stripes,  I  hop*  the  fifes 
will  play  Yankee  Doodle. 

Poetry?  No  sir!  We  in  America  know  what  poets 
are.  William  Cullen  Bryant  is  a  poet. 
Thirty  years  have  passed,  and  during  the  centenary 
week  America  was  engaged  in  a  literary  drive  in 
honour  of  Walt  Whitman.  A  school  of  poets  has 
arisen  who  call  him  Master.  Walt  Whitman  has 
come  into  his  kingdom.  I  pick  up  Louis  Unter- 
meyer's  "The  New  Era  in  American  Poetry,"  and 
read  that  Walt  Whitman  is  the  great  precipitant 
and  liberator  of  emotions  that  have  been  too  long 
stifled,  and  that  for  the  first  time  (owing  to  Whit 
man's  pioneer  work)  a  great  part  of  American 
letters  is  actually  American.  Whitman  set  the 
American  poet  free. 

Come,  Muse,  migrate  from  Greece  and  Ionia, 

Cross  out,  please,  those  immensely  overpaid  accounts; 

That  matter  of  Troy  and  Achilles'  wrath,  and  /Eneas' 

and  Odysseus'  wanderings. 
Placard,  "Removed"  and  "To  Let"  on  the  rocks  of  your 

snowy  Parnassus  .  .  . 
For  now  a  better,  fresher,  busier  sphere;  a  wider  untried 

domain  awaits  and  demands  you. 


316  Authors  and  I 

But  my  joy  in  this  new  fierce  freedom  does  not 
mean  any  lessening  of  my  joy,  in  the  milder  freedom 
of  the  past.  I  am  not  a  Futurist,  I  am  a  citizen 
of  the  dear  old  world,  so  proud  of  it,  so  gratefftl 
to  it,  that  I  can  quite  easily  smile  at  Mr.  Van  Wyck 
Brooks'  gibe  at  the  New  England  group — "  'our 
Poets'  were  commonly  six  in  number,  kindly,  grey- 
bearded,  or  otherwise  grizzled  old  men.  One  recalls 
a  prevailing  six,  with  variations.  Sometimes  a  ven 
erable  historian  was  included,  a  novelist  or  so,  and 
even  Bayard  Taylor.  Nothing  could  make  one  feel 
so  like  a  prodigal  son  as  to  look  at  that  picture." 
Emerson  illuminates,  Whittier  and  Longfellow 
soothe  and  charm,  but  Walt  Whitman  startles. 
You  hear  the  ring  of  his  axe  on  the  tree:  you 
realise  that  the  good  grey  poet  is  a  fighter ;  you  hear 
him  cry  to  the  New  England  group: 

What  to  such  as  you  anyhow  such  a  poet  as  I  ?  therefore, 

leave  my  works, 
And  go  lull  yourself  with  what  you  can  understand,  and 

with  piano  tunes, 
For  I  lull  nobody,  and  you  will  never  understand  me. 

But  we  do  understand  him.     Even 

Silent  and  amazed  even  when  a  little  boy, 

I  remember  I  heard  the  preacher  every  Sunday  put  God 

in  his  statements, 
As  contending  against  some  being  or  influence. 

Also 

Roaming  in  thought  over  the  Universe,  I  saw  the  little 
that  is  Good  steadily  hastening  toward  immortality 

And  the  vast  that  is  called  Evil  I  saw  hastening  to  merge 
itself  and  become  lost  and  dead. 


Walt  Whitman  317 

And  if  with  memories  of  "I  Stood  Tiptoe  upon  a 
Little  Hill"  or  "Tears,  Idle  Tears,"  or  "Stone 
Walls  Do  Not  a  Prison  Make"  in  your  head,  you 
declare  that  Walt  Whitman  is  not  a  poet,  please 
call  him  a  Prophet  or  better  still  a  Man.  Then 
read  "Good-bye,  my  Fancy!"  and  be  very  glad  for 
Walt. 

Good-bye,  ray  Fancy! 

Farewell,  dear  mate,  dear  Love! 

If  we  go  anywhere  we'll  go  together  (yes,  we'll   remain 

one), 
Maybe  we'll  be  better  off  and  blither,   and  learn  some* 

thing, 
Maybe  it  is  yourself  now  really  ushering  me  to  the  true 

songs  (who  knows?) 
Maybe  it  is  you  the  mortal  knot  really  undoing,  turning — 

so  now  finally 
Good-bye — and  hail!  my  Fancy! 

In  England  as  well  as  in  America  the  thoughts  of 
many  on  May  31,  1919,  dwelt  on  Walt  Whitman, 
who  sang  of  Freedom  in  a  New  World,  and  found 
his  subjects  around  him,  what  eyes  saw,  what  heart 
felt,  what  head  reasoned.  He  sang  of  things  here, 
not  there.  He  was  himself. 

And,  as  a  last  word,  Emerson  looms  up.  What  a 
man  he  was!  Re-read  his  "American  Scholar"  and 
remember  that  this  American  literary  Declaration 
of  Independence  was  delivered  in  1838,  seventeen 
years  before  the  issue  of  "Leaves  of  Grass."  Walt 
must  have  read  it,  and  Walt  alone  knows  how  much 
he  pot  from  that  wonder-man  and  poet-sage — Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson. 


58.    W.  B.  YEATS 

POETS  do  not  always  look  like  poets.  William 
Butler  Yeats  does.  He  also  acts  like  a  poet, 
that  is,  like  a  real  poet,  which  he  is.  New  acquaint 
ances  think  he  poses.  That  is  not  my  opinion.  A 
poseur  is  sometimes  caught  unaware.  You  never 
catch  the  author  of  "The  Wanderings  of  Oisin," 
1889  (his  first),  and  "The  Wild  Swans  at  Coole," 
1919  (one  of  his  latest),  unaware.  He  looks  like 
an  apostle  of  the  Celtic  glamour  compromising  with 
civilisation;  he  appears  to  be  dwelling  in  the  Celtic 
twilight;  to  me  it  has  always  seemed  that  his  resi 
dence  in  London  is  temporary,  that  he  has  in  his 
pocket  a  return  ticket  to  Innisfree. 
He  is  no  hennit.  I  have  met  him  half  a  hundred 
times,  and  on  each  occasion  I  have  been  quite  aware 
of  the  implicit  understanding  between  us  that  he 
knows  he  is  a  poet,  and  he  knows  that  I  am  an 
ordinary  person.  He  does  not  complain.  I  do  not 
complain.  These  are  facts.  He  always  looks 
exactly  the  same:  he  always  wears  a  blue  serge  suit, 
with  a  flowing  black  tie,  and  he  always,  at  stated 
intervals,  tosses  his  long,  straight  hair  away  from  his 
eyes.  And  he  always,  when  I  address  him,  looks 
surprised  and  remote;  he  frames  his  answer  care 
fully,  and  speaks  as  if  he  were  addressing  somebody 
who  is  not  I,  but  might  be.  I  like  looking  at  him. 


W.  B.  Yeats  319 

He  is  that  rare  combination — a  good  poet,  a  good 
prose  writer,  and  good  to  look  upon.  That  is,  if 
you  like  looking  at  poets.  Sometimes  I  think  that  I 
have  not  been  talking  to  him  at  all,  that  while  I 
have  been  drawing  him  out,  he  has  been  drawing  in, 
drawing  away  invisibly  to  some  forlorn  Celtic  cabin, 
there  to  increase  the  sea  with  his  tears,  and  the  wan 
dering  wind  with  his  sighs.  Maybe  I  want  to  talk 
to  him  about  cricket,  or  national  extravagance,  or 
the  difference  between  J.  M.  Synge  and  George  R. 
Sims,  It  is  little  good.  He  affects  to  listen  but 
he  is  really  in  the  land  east  of  the  sun  and  west  of 
the  moon  where  the  Irish  poetess  lived  who  wrote: 

The  kinc  of  my  father  they  are  straying  from  their  keep 
ing, 

The  young  goat's  at  mischief,  yet  nothing  can  I  do, 
For  all  through  the  night  I  heard  the  Banshee  keening, 

0  youth  of  my  loving,  and  is  it  well  with  you? 

Yet  with  it  all  W.  B.  Yeats  is  practical.  He  has 
the  wisdom  of  the  mystic. 

1  met  him  first  at  a  small  dinner  party.     He  sat 
sideways.     That  is  all  I  remember  of  the  occasion. 
I  recall  nothing  of  his  talk.     I  remember  only  the 
attitude  of  his  body,   legs  crossed,  parallel  to  the 
table,  and  his  right  shoulder  in  the  place  of  honour. 
Nobody  seemed  to  mind  or  to  think  it  strange.     I 
had  a  kind  of  idea  that  he  wanted  to  show  that, 
although  he  had  left  Ireland,  he  was  not  at  home 
with  the  Saxon.     I  rather  liked  him  for  it. 
Really,  I  do  not  think  he  is  aware  that  he  sometimes 
acts  in  an  un-British  way.    Once  at  a  public  dinner 


320  Authors  and  I 

he  delivered  an  impassioned  speech.  No  English 
man  ever  delivers  an  impassioned  speech:  it  is  bad 
form.  But  that  was  not  all.  As  he  spoke  he 
roamed  up  and  down  the  room  like  a  wild  animal 
in  a  cage.  When  he  finished  he  was  far  from  his 
seat.  I  am  sure  he  was  more  surprised  than  any 
body  else. 

On  another  occasion,  after  a  literary  gathering,  he 
invited  a  poet  and  myself  to  return  to  his  rooms  and 
hear  his  newest  poem.  At  that  time  he  was  living 
in  a  gaunt  house  off  the  Euston  Road,  the  kind  of 
house  that  E.  A.  Poe  might  have  chosen  as  the  scene 
of  a  story.  Yeats*  rooms  were  up  several  flights, 
and  it  pleased  me  to  find  that  they  were  Spartan  in 
their  bareness.  Perhaps  now  that  Ireland  is  pros 
perous  he  may  have  become  luxurious.  I  hope  not. 
In  the  centre  of  the  room  was  a  long  deal  table 
littered  with  manuscripts  and  books.  Before  this 
table  he  knelt,  and  by  the  light  of  a  guttering  candle 
he  read,  or  rather  intoned  "The  Countess  Kathleen" 
(I  think  that  was  the  work).  Did  he  read  it  all? 
Probably.  He  read  on  and  on,  and  believe  me  his 
tumbled  hair  and  pale  face  illumined  by  the  gutter 
ing  candle  made  an  effect  that  newspaper  writers 
call  Rembrandtish.  He  was  indifferent  to  us:  he 
did  not  see  that  the  other  poet  had  fallen  fast  asleep. 
Time  sped ;  he  read  on,  until  somewhere  in  the  small 
hours  I  caught  my  courage,  roused  the  other  poet 
from  his  slumbers,  and  said,  "Awfully  sorry,  but 
we  must  be  going."  Our  host,  I  remember,  did 
carry  the  candle  to  the  top  of  the  stairs  to  light  us 
down.  Then  he  returned  to  his  poem,  for  as  we 


W.  B.  Yeats  321 

creaked  down  to  the  street  door  I  heard  him 
declaiming  fine  verse  to  our  empty  chairs.  "Yeats 
is  a  good  poet,"  said  my  companion,  permitting  a 
yawn,  "but  he  has  no  sense  of  time." 
His  poems  sing.  They  are  dream  poems,  melan 
choly,  mournful.  Many  of  them  have  that  exquisite 
simplicity  which  Anatole  France  calls  the  highest 
form  of  literary  art,  thus: 

How  many  loved  your  moments  of  glad  grace, 
And  loved  your  beauty  with  love  false  or  true; 
But  one  man  loved  the  pilgrim  soul  in  you, 
And  loved  the  sorrows  of  your  changing  face. 

His  prose  has  also  the  beauty  of  simplicity.  His 
thought  may  be  wilful,  his  unceasing  lament  that 
the  world  should  be  what  it  is  may  become  tedious; 
his  suggestion  that  the  interests  of  mankind  are 
unimportant  compared  with  the  yearning  dreams  of 
the  Irish  peasant  may  arouse  ire,  but  nothing  can 
hurt  the  grave  and  simple  beauty  of  his  style.  It 
flows  on,  welling  up  from  hidden  waters. 
When  I  read  Yeats'  "Ideas  of  Good  and  Evil,"  I 
wonder  if  it  is  really  the  same  language  as  that  used 
by  the  young  gentlemen  who  write  the  stories  in 
the  Saturday  Evening  Post.  And  when  I  dip  into 
Yeats'  edition  of  William  Blake,  I  wonder  if  Blake 
and  Yeats  and  Kipling  and  O.  Henry  come  from 
the  same  stock.  It  is  curious  to  turn  from  a  reading 
of  "Barrack  Room  Ballads"  to  this  impersonal, 
poetic  aristocrat  of  letters,  this  seer  of  the  twilight, 
this  "singer  of  pearl  pale  fingers  and  dove-grey  sea 
boards," 


322  Authors  and  I 

Yet  one  of  his  poems  has  had  almost  as  great  a 
success  as  Russell's  "Cheer,  Boys,  Cheer."  Such 
things  do  happen.  The  poem  is  "The  Lake  Isle  of 
Innisfree."  No  living  poet  has  had  such  unasked, 
unsought  praise  for  one  poem  as  William  Butler 
Yeats  had  from  Robert  Louis  Stevenson.  Note  that 
the  letter  is  addressed  to  "Dear  Sir,"  an  infrequent 
custom  with  Stevenson.  It  shows  how  strong  must 
have  been  his  impulse  to  write  to  a  stranger: 

"To  W.  B.  Yeats, 

"Vailima,  Samoa,  April  14,  1894. 
"Dear  Sir:  Long  since  when  I  was  a  boy  I 
remember  the  emotions  with  which  I  repeated  Swin 
burne's  poems  and  ballads.  Some  ten  years  ago,  a 
similar  spell  was  cast  upon  me  by  Meredith's  'Lovt 
in  a  Valley';  the  stanzas  beginning,  'When  her 
mother  tends  her'  haunted  me,  and  I  remember 
waking  with  them  all  the  echoes  about  Heyeres.  It 
may  interest  you  to  hear  that  I  have  a  third  time 
fallen  in  slavery:  this  is  to  your  poem  called  'The 
Lake  Isle  of  Innisfree.'  It  is  so  quaint  and  airy, 
simple,  artful,  and  eloquent  to  the  heart — but  I  seek 
words  in  vain.  Enough  that  'always,  night  and  day, 
I  hear  lake  water  lapping  with  low  sounds  on  the 
shore,'  and  am,  yours  gratefully, 

"ROBERT  Louis  STEVENSON." 

Now  I  am  going  to  give  myself  the  pleasure  of  copy 
ing  out  "The  Lake  Isle  of  Innisfree" : 

I  will  arise  and  go  now,  and  go  to  Innisfree, 

And  a  small  cabin  build  there,  of  clay  and  wattles  made; 


W.  B.  Yeats  323 

Nine  bean  rows  will  I  have  there,  a  hive  for  the  honey 

bee, 
And  live  alone  in  the  bee-loud  glade. 

And  I  shall  have  some  peace  there,  for  peace  comes  drop 
ping  slow, 

Dropping  from  the  veils  of  the  morning  to  where  the 
cricket  sings; 

There  midnight's  all  a-glimmer,  and  noon  a  purple  glow 

And  evening  full  of  the  linnets'  wings. 

I  will  arise  and  go  now,  for  always  night  and  day 
I  hear  lake  water  lapping  with  low  sounds  by  the  shore; 
While  I  stand  on  the  roadway,  or  on  the  pavements  grey, 
I  hear  it  in  the  deep  heart's  core. 

In  his  latest  book  of  poems,  "The  Wild  Swans  at 
Coole,"  the  Celtic  sadness  of  Mr.  Yeats  becomes  so 
shadowy  sad  that  his  readers  can  almost  believe  that 
his  muse  will  drop  into  silence,  that  his  wild  swans 
of  verse  have  made  their  last  flight.  Perhaps  the 
theatre  is  wooing  him  from  the  harp.  Certainly  the 
theatre  stimulates  him.  At  the  performances  of  the 
Irish  plays  at  the  Court  Theatre  he  was  quite  ani 
mated,  and  on  one  of  these  occasions  he  addressed 
me,  to  my  astonishment,  with  marked  friendliness, 
as  if  I  were  an  Irish  playwright  or  poet. 
I  am  told  that  he  is  still  meditating  a  theatrical 
penetration  of  America.  Mr.  Belasco  need  not  be 
anxious.  The  Yeats  theatre  has  no  scenery — only 
a  back  cloth  and  a  silken  curtain.  There  is  no 
making  up:  the  actors  and  actresses  wear  masks. 
And  there  is  no  stage.  The  performances  will  take 
place  in  drawing-rooms.  A  hostess  telephones,  and 
the  company  arrives.  They  will  present  the  drama 


324  Authors  and  I 

of  intimacy:  they  will  convey  fine  verse,  and  plots 
sad  and  moving,  humorous  and  pathetic.  I  hope 
they  will  perform  Yeats'  own  poetic  dramas,  and 
Synge,  and  Lady  Gregory,  and  the  others  who  stress 
the  Celtic  wistfulness  and  humour.  I  look  forward, 
with  eager  anticipation,  to  the  Yeats  drawing-room 
drama,  and  I  am  sure  that  I  shall  not  fall  asleep 
as  I  did  at  "Mecca." 


59.    MY  FIRST  BOOK 

TIDYING  up,  sorting  old  papers,  emptying 
drawers,  preparing  for  the  new  year,  I  came 
upon  some  reviews  of  My  First  Book.  I  sighed, 
and  smiled.  When  published  it  seemed  so  impor 
tant:  now — well,  at  any  rate,  it  taught  me  some 
thing  and  it  astonished  my  mother.  "What,"  she 
cried,  "the  little  boy  whose  hair  I  used  to  smooth — 
an  author!" 

Do  you  remember  that  Jerome  K.  Jerome,  when 
editing  To  Day,  persuaded  a  group  of  authors  each 
to  write  an  article  called  "My  First  Book"?  I 
believe  every  writer  of  eminence,  whom  he  ap 
proached,  allowed  himself  to  be  caught  in  the 
Jerome  net.  Who  can  resist  writing  about  "My 
First  Book"? 

I  am  doing  it.  I  am  looking  at  My  First  Book,  set 
forth,  title  and  date,  in  perdurable  print  in  "Who's 
Who."  It  was  called  "The  Enchanted  Stone." 
No,  I  am  not  giving  it  publicity.  It  cannot  be 
advertised.  It  has  been  REMAINDERED. 
I  wonder  if  the  general  public  knows  the  meaning 
of  the  word  "remaindered"  in  publishing  circles. 
It  signifies  that  the  book  has  been  discarded,  given 
up  as  a  bad  job.  Suppose  the  edition  is  1,000 
copies,  that  150  sell  in  the  first  six  months,  and  that 
a  year  later  the  200  mark  has  not  been  passed.  The 
3*5 


326  Authors  and  I 

publisher,  if  he  be  hard-hearted  and  business-like, 
will  "remainder"  the  800  remaining  copies  to  an 
agent  for  a  few  pennies  a  copy.  The  agent  will 
ship  them  to  Australia,  to  South  Africa,  to  the 
Treaty  ports,  to  Brooklyn,  to  New  Jersey,  to  any 
place  that  is  eager  for  wholesome  literature  at  an 
absurd  price.  There  they  are  tumbled  into  bar 
gain  boxes.  It  is  a  fine  way  for  an  author  to  become 
known  throughout  the  English-speaking  world:  it 
may  bring  tardy  fame,  but  it  is  not  a  good  way  of 
earning  a  living.  Not  long  ago  I  bought  a  copy 
of  My  First  Book  from  a  ten-cent  box  in  lower 
New  York.  It  was  promptly  borrowed  by  a  rich 
friend.  And  about  the  same  time  a  stranger  wrote 
to  me  from  New  Zealand  (evidently  he  had  been 
browsing  in  the  "tuppenny  box")  asking  if  I  really 
meant  what  I  said  on  page  something  or  other. 
He  forgot  to  inclose  the  postage  for  a  reply.  "Re 
mainder"  authors  have  their  troubles,  but  they  do 
not  have  to  worry  over  income  tax  forms. 
When  I  dream  about  My  First  Book,  and  realise 
that  even  now  it  is  still  being  read  somewhere  in  the 
wide  world  (it  has  yet  to  descend  into  the  five-cent 
box),  I  do  wish  that  I  had  made  it  better.  But 
could  I  ?  I  think  not.  I  did  it  as  well  as  ever 
I  could.  It  cannot  have  been  shockingly  bad  because 
in  1901  a  German  wrote  to  me  from  Bonn  asking 
if  he  might  translate  it  into  German,  and  desiring 
the  names  of  any  other  books  I  had  written.  The 
Germans  are  a  strange  people.  I  did  not  correspond 
with  the  Bonn  enthusiast  but  his  1901  inquiry  about 
"any  other  books"  prompts  me  to  say  to  myself, 


My  First  Book  327 

here  and  now,  from  the  wisdom  altitude  of  the  year 
1920 — "Why  did  you  write  this  book — this  First 
Book?" 

To  all  such  questions  Dr.  Johnson  has  given  the 
model  answer.  "Sheer  ignorance,  madam,"  he 
replied,  when  a  lady  asked  him  why,  in  his  Diction 
ary,  he  had  ascribed  the  pastern  to  the  wrong  part 
of  the  horse.  "Why  did  I  write  and  publish  that 
First  Book?  Sheer  vanity,  reader." 
At  the  time  I  pretended  that  I  was  expressing  my 
self,  and  incidentally  adding  to  the  world's  interest, 
pleasure,  and  uplift.  It  was  really  business  push. 
I  had  chosen  the  career  of  writing,  I  had  prepared 
for  it,  I  must  deliver  the  goods,  I  must  publish  a 
book.  Everybody  was  doing  it,  that  is,  everybody 
I  admired.  Kipling  and  Stevenson  were  startling 
the  town ;  Barrie  had  worked  his  way  to  London 
and  was  becoming  a  marked  man ;  H.  G.  Wells 
was  showing  his  mettle  in  "The  Time  Machine"; 
F.  Anstey  was  selling  by  the  thousand,  Hugh  Con- 
way  by  the  hundred  thousand;  editors  were  com 
peting  for  "Anthony  Hope,"  "John  Oliver  Hobbes," 
and  W.  W.  Jacobs;  and  Hall  Caine  was  dating  his 
letters  from  a  castle  in  the  Isle  of  Man. 
My  admirations,  you  perceive,  were  all  in  the  imag 
inative  zone.  I  felt  no  call  toward  anything  else, 
and  having  informed  my  parents  a  few  years  before 
that  I  was  about  to  commence  author,  it  never 
occurred  to  me  that  my  imagination  could  fail  when 
I  bade  it  start  imagining.  It  did  not  fail  me.  It 
was  willing  to  invent  at  breakneck  speed.  On  the 
quality  of  the  invention  I  am  mute. 


328  Authors  and  I 

So  having  determined  to  write  a  Romance,  yes,  a 
Romance,  I  began  to  note  down  all  the  romantic 
and  adventurous  things  that  had  happened  to  me  in 
thought  and  in  deed ;  and  as  I  tabulated  scene  after 
scene,  and  episode  after  episode,  a  kind  of  story 
gradually  evolved;  and  labelled  abstractions  and 
oddities,  which  I  called  characters,  began  to  clamour 
for  names  which  I  proceeded  to  pick  from  the  Post 
Office  Directory. 

Now,  of  course,  I  see  that  my  method  was  all  wrong 
from  the  very  beginning.  The  characters  should 
come  first,  and  their  development  should  determine 
events.  This  I  could  not  do.  I  was  not  interested 
in  men  and  woman:  I  was  interested  in  ideas,  not, 
alas,  as  they  might  affect  the  world,  but  as  they  did 
affect  me.  This  is  a  sad  confession,  but  I  was 
rather  young,  and  so  self-confident  that  nothing 
could  deter  me  from  trying  to  write  just  the  kind 
of  Romance  that  I  wanted  to  write. 
What  was  it  about?  I  will  not  trouble  you  with 
the  plot.  I  will  only  say  that  I  had  been  reading 
tvith  absorbing  interest  Max  Miiller's  "Six  Systems 
of  Indian  Philosophy";  that  I  was  interested  in 
astronomy  and  metallurgy;  that  I  had  actually 
imagined  some  of  the  properties  of  radium  before 
that  odd  metal  had  been  discovered ;  that  I  had 
dabbled  in  Cornish  Methodism,  in  Stone  Circles, 
and  in  the  effects  of  light  at  certain  recorded 
instants  of  the  world's  history.  I  was  also  ac 
quainted  with  Wilkie  Collins'  "Moonstone,"  and 
was  familiar  with  certain  phases  of  journalistic  life 
in  London.  The  hero  of  my  Romance  was  a 


My  First  Book  329 

young  newspaper  man.  He  alone  could  weld  the 
disparate  elements  of  the  plot  together.  He  did  it 
with  charm,  and  with  an  ease  that  now  amazes  and 
amuses  me.  I  was  careful  to  make  him  my  opposite 
in  every  particular:  he  may  stand  as  an  example  of, 
at  that  time,  the  kind  of  person  I  should  like  to 
have  been. 

With  incredible  labour,  writing  and  re-writing, 
deleting  and  destroying,  pruning,  and  adding,  I 
completed  this  farrago  of  romanticism  in  a  year. 
It  began  artfully,  brusquely,  thus — "As  a  reporter 
I  was  conscientious."  I  make  one  claim  for  the 
story.  There  was  not  a  superfluous  word  in  it,  and 
when  the  editor  of  "The  Yellow  Book,  published 
a  chapter,  complete  in  itself,  as  a  short  story,"  I  felt 
that  my  face  was  set  toward  Olympus. 
I  have  read  somewhere  that  authors  occasionally 
have  difficulty  in  finding  a  publisher  for  a  first  book. 
I  had  none.  Here  is  the  unvarnished  tale.  I 
belonged  to  a  literary  and  arts  club  where  publishers 
and  authors,  painters  and  patrons,  tried  to  treat 
each  other  as  human  beings.  One  evening  I  enticed 
a  nice  publisher  into  a  corner,  and  gave  him  an 
animated  description  of  my  Romance.  He  tried  not 
to  be  interested:  in  the  small  hours  he  succun^Bed, 
and  said,  "Send  it  along.  I'll  see  what  I  can  do." 
His  reader  reported  favourably,  and  when  we  next 
met  he  made  a  proposition,  which  I  declined. 
Just  think  of  it.  I  declined  an  offer  from  an 
eminent  publisher  to  publish  My  First  Book. 
The  reason  was  that,  in  the  interim,  something  quite 
extraordinary  had  happened.  I  had  shown  a  dupli- 


330  Authors  and  I 

cate  typewritten  copy  of  the  Romance  to  a  friend, 
W.  Earl  Hodgson,  who  was  also  a  publishers' 
reader.  He  took  it  home  with  him,  and  the  very 
next  morning  sent  me,  by  special  messenger,  a 
letter  which  made  me  feel  that  I  was  actually  on 
the  slopes  of  Olympus.  He  was  enthusiastic  about 
"The  Enchanted  Stone";  he  was  proud  to  have 
"discovered"  me,  and  he  begged  me  to  call,  that 
very  afternoon,  upon  Messrs.  A.  and  C.  Black,  the 
famous  publishers.  "I  read  for  them,"  he  added, 
"and  they  are  grateful  to  me  for  introducing  you  to 
them." 

Messrs.  A.  and  C.  Black  could  not  have  treated 
the  author  of  "Waverley"  more  pleasantly.  They 
offered  me  quite  a  handsome  sum  on  account  of 
royalties,  and  sent  the  manuscript  to  be  printed  at 
once.  For  four  or  five  years  the  notion  that  I  was 
a  catch  lingered  with  that  admirable  firm.  When 
ever  I  called  with  the  MSS.  of  a  new  book  under 
my  arm  the  senior  Partner  smiled  a  welcome,  and 
the  junior  Partner  sent  immediately  for  the  binder 
so  that  I  might  choose  the  cover  decorations. 
My  First  Book  was  beautifully  reviewed.  Two 
morning  paper  gave  it  "Published  today"  column 
notices;  three  weekly  papers  were  more  than  kind; 
and  the  provincial  press  were  most  gratifying.  One 
journal  said  that  Stevenson  would  have  to  look  to 
his  laurels,  another  remarked  that  I  should  "go 
far." 

But  the  hard  world  did  not  show  the  least  desire 
to  read  "The  Enchanted  Stone."  It  fell  quite  flat. 
Nobody  wanted  it.  Occasionally  some  nice  man  or 


My  First  Book  331 

woman  would  tell  me  at  evening  parties  how  much 
they  had  enjoyed  reading  it,  but  when  I  addressed 
questions  to  them  I  found  that  they  had  not  pe 
rused  it  carefully.  For  two  years  Messrs.  A.  and  C. 
Black  sent  me  regularly  a  carefully  audited  state 
ment  of  copies  "sold,"  and  copies  "on  hand."  In 
time  they  tired  of  doing  that.  The  figures  in  the 
"copies  on  hand"  and  "copies  sold"  columns  never 
changed. 

Then  came  the  Remainder  Man.  I  shall  never 
write  another  Romance. 

But  it  is  pleasant  to  think  that,  perhaps,  at  this  very 
moment,  in  some  remote  district  of  the  world,  the 
horny  hand  of  toil  is  picking  it  out  of  the  Penny 
Box,  and  saying,  "Ullol  This  looks  a  bit  of 
all  right." 


60.  MY  LATEST  BOOK:  THIS  ONE 

THERE  are  authors  who  write  books  because, 
so  they  say,  they  must  write  or  perish.  I  am 
not  of  that  kind.  Before  I  was  fifty  years  of  age 
writing  \vas  a  task.  There  wrere  so  many  more 
enjoyable  ways  of  living  than  sitting  at  a  desk. 
Talking,  as  a  means  of  self-expression,  was  easier 
and  pleasanter.  Before  fifty  the  only  kind  of  writ 
ing  I  enjoyed  doing  was  the  little  "Things  Seen" 
which  I  turned  out  with  ease,  and  which,  I  suspect, 
was  the  complete  expression  of  what  talent  I  pos 
sessed.  Some  other  authors  are  like  this,  but  all 
do  not  confess  to  it.  Most  writers,  like  myself, 
are  born  into  the  world  equipped  with  a  nice  little 
pot  of  fresh  butter.  We  use  it  up  lavishly  in  the 
hot  years  of  youth ;  but  there  is  always  a  little  left, 
and  we  spend  the  remainder  of  our  lives  spreading 
the  butter  thinner  and  thinner. 
After  I  had  passed  the  adorable  age  of  fifty  I  made 
the  discovery  that  I  was  beginning  to  enjoy  writing. 
It  became  less  of  a  task.  I  had  discovered  the 
proper  pen,  the  proper  kind  of  paper,  and  the 
proper  way  of  sitting  at  a  table,  sideways,  with 
the  right  arm  resting  on  a  big,  blue  blotting  pad 
(blue  is  the  proper  colour),  and  the  light  falling 
over  the  left  shoulder,  so  that  one  can  look  out  of 
the  window  at  the  birds,  and  the  sky,  between  the 
332 


My  Latest  Book:  This  One       333 

paragraphs.  Also  after  fifty,  I  began  to  be  more 
interested  in  shaping  an  article,  and  in  saying  things, 
not  because  they  were  the  things  I  ought  to  say, 
but  because  they  were  the  things  I  wanted  to  say 
at  the  moment.  They  might  be  foolish,  they  might 
be  wise,  but  they  were  mine.  In  a  word  I  lost  the 
menace  of  fear.  I  began  to  enjoy  being  obliged  to 
finish  a  literary  job  by  a  certain  date;  and  I  dis 
covered  that  whereas  before  fifty  my  articles  or 
essays  were  always  short,  just  long  enough  to  con 
vince  an  editor  that  I  was  treating  him  squarely, 
after  fifty  I  fell  into  the  way  of  writing  more  than 
was  needed.  Perhaps  my  thoughts  came  quicker; 
perhaps  I  was  less  tempted  to  be  out  and  about  in 
the  adventurous  world,  more  inclined  to  sit  at  a 
desk:  perhaps  I  began  to  realise  that  spiritual  adven 
tures  are  quite  as  enjoyable  as  material  ones. 
Neither  before  fifty  nor  since  have  I  wanted  to 
startle  or  astound  the  world  with  a  momentous 
book.  That  is  not  in  my  line.  But  since  fifty  I 
have  entirely  enjoyed  doing  my  bit  in  a  modest  cor 
ner  of  the  writing  world,  and  have  been  vastly 
amused,  as  I  have  already  said,  to  find  that  I  was 
acquiring  the  habit  of  exceeding  my  space.  This 
vice,  or  this  virtue,  whichever  you  like  to  call 
it,  was  the  cause  of  the  present  book— "Authors 
and  I." 

It  happened  in  this  way. 

In  the  early  spring  of  1917  Mr.  John  Lane  asked 
me  to  write  a  brief  introduction  to  a  new  illus 
trated  edition  of  "Christ  in  Hades"  by  Stephen 
Phillips,  the  reason  of  the  offer  being  that  in  1898, 


334  Authors  and  I 

when  I  was  Editor  of  the  Academy,  we  had 
"crowned"  his  "Poems"  containing  "Christ  in 
Hades"  and  awarded  Stephen  Phillips  one  hundred 
guineas.  So  I  was  supposed  to  know  something 
about  him. 

That  was  a  pleasant  literary  enterprise,  and  I  set 
about  it  eagerly.  Soon  I  found  that  my  post-fifty 
habit  of  writing  more  than  I  need  had  become 
chronic  and  vehement,  and  that  the  brief  Introduc 
tion  was  shaping  into  the  skeleton  of  a  literary 
history  of  the  nineties  so  far  as  that  history  con 
cerned  myself.  I  am  no  British  Museum  student: 
nothing  has  happened  unless  it  has  happened  to 
me. 

When  I  found  that  my  brief  Introduction  was 
getting  out  of  hand  I  explained  the  situation  to 
Mr.  John  Lane.  He  replied:  "Go  ahead!"  I 
went  ahead,  with  the  result  that,  when  the  book 
was  published,  amused  flaneurs  remarked  that  the 
Introduction  was  sixty  pages  and  the  Poem  twenty- 
five. 

Any  School  of  Jourualism  would  tell  a  pupil  that 
to  write  sixty  pages  when  ten  only  are  required  is 
bad  business.  So  it  is.  But  sometimes  generosity 
has  a  way  of  winning  hands  down  over  business 
principles.  Here  follows  an  example. 
When  I  came  to  America  in  1917,  Mr.  Frederick 
Dixon,  Editor  of  the  Christian  Science  Moni 
tor  spoke  to  me  appreciatively  of  that  Introduc 
tion.  Indeed,  he  said  that  he  had  enjoyed  it  im 
mensely,  and  that,  like  Oliver,  he  wanted  more. 
Being  an  Editor  he  could  command  more.  We 


My  Latest  Book:  This  One       335 

talked,  and  there  and  then  it  was  arranged  that  I 
should  contribute  to  the  Christian  Science  Moni 
tor  a  weekly  article  under  the  heading  "A  Book 
man's  Memories."  The  series  began  with  general 
recollections  of  the  writers  who  flourished  in  the 
nineties  (many  are  still  flourishing),  but  soon  the 
articles  fell  to  considering  particular  authors:  hence 
the  title  now  chosen  "Authors  and  I,"  which  hap 
pens  to  be  the  best  descriptive  title  I  can  invent,  as 
"Art  and  I"  was  the  obvious  title  of  another  book 
xvhich  has  evolved  from  the  columns  of  the  Chris 
tian  Science  Monitor,  and  the  sympathy  of  its 
Editor.  The  I,  if  it  looks  like  an  attitude,  is  also 
apt.  The  two  books  are,  for  better  or  worse,  just 
my  reactions  to  certain  authors,  and  to  certain 
phases  of  art. 

I  do  not  suppose  that  "Authors  and  I"  could  have 
been  written  week  by  week,  without  missing  one 
Tuesday  from  March  12,  1919,  to  the  present 
moment,  had  it  not  been  for  the  admirable  Public 
Library  system  of  America.  Three  thousand  miles 
away  from  my  own  books,  I  found,  first  at  West- 
port,  Connecticut,  and  then  at  the  58th  Street 
Branch  of  the  New  York  Public  Library,  that  when 
I  needed  books  I  had  only  to  explain  my  wants  to 
the  young  lady  in  charge  to  have  all  the  works  of 
the  author,  chosen  for  the  week,  placed  at  my  dis 
posal.  Sometimes  in  58th  Street  it  must  have 
looked  as  if  I  was  about  to  open  a  second  hand  book 
shop.  How  delightful  it  was,  by  my  own  radiator, 
to  linger  evening  after  evening  over  an  author,  and 
to  be  at  him  again  long  before  the  morning  paper 


336  duthors  and  I 

arrived.  This  was  my  harvest.  I  gathered  it  in 
joyfully,  without  labour,  for  the  seeds  had  been 
sown  in  the  seven  arduous  years  during  which  it 
was  my  privilege  to  be  Editor  of  the  Academy. 
So  this  book  came  into  being:  so  the  various  writers 
with  whom  I  lived,  in  spirit,  week  by  week,  com 
posed  themselves  into  this,  my  latest  book — 
"Authors  and  I." 

Those  chosen  are  my  own  choice,  and  the  musings 
are  merely  mine.  It  was  Dryden  who  said  "An 
author  has  the  choice  of  his  own  thoughts." 

NEW  YORK,  AUTUMN,  1920. 


THE  END 


'  M 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORRONVH, 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


Thi                   <•»'  ••- 

_    DEC  6    '67  -10  AM 

_       LOAN  DEPT. 

\  A  M          .    _. 

,n  ' 

KtU  UIK.  JUL    17     if 

- 

— 

- 



— 

• 


' 


DEC    6196794 


(A1724*10)476B 


Berkeley 


"77? 


